Sustainable construction resources

Figure 8.1 Framework for sustainable construction. Resource efficiency is the key and it is the application of the basic principles during all phases of the life-cycle of the built environment that provides the potential for sustainability.

The earth is constructed by all elements in the periodic table. Mapping of the spatial distribution of nearly all the elements in the periodic table will get a new overview of the earth surface construction for better stewarship of sustainable environmental management with sustainable mineral resources development. 

One of the major factors undermining the sustainability of a production process is the depletion of the resources it uses. A quantification of process sustainability should therefore include a parameter that deals with the sustainability of resource utilization, and the construction of such a parameter begins with defining a quantitative measure for the depletion of an individual resource. One way of doing this is to classify each resource as either renewable or nonrenewable, as was done by De Wulf et al. [36]. The distinction made between renewable and nonrenewable resources is that renewable resources are created at least as fast as they are consumed (e.g., solar energy), while nonrenewable resources are consumed faster than they are created (e.g., crude oil). 

The forest products companies, on the other hand, see plastics as a way to expand sustainable forest resource utilization through the use of wood waste, fibers from underutilized species, and reclamation and recycling of wood, other agricultural species and waste, and paper materials from municipal solid waste streams (62), as well as a way to make new construction materials with attributes that wood does not have (56). 

Sustainable development calls for a balanced approach, pursuing neither perfection in environmental performance nor abandoning It In the pursuit of profit. It requires the prudent use of natural resources, moving towards the triple bottom line of environmental, social and economic accountability. A strategy document was published In the UK in April 2000 to promote more sustainable construction. A full discussion of the Issues Involved is beyond the scope of this book, but the references quoted at the end of the chapter should be consulted for a wider scope than is presented here. 

In the oil and gas industry, the term abandonment generally refers to the activities undertaken to remove the structures used to sustain oil and gas production after the production is ceased. The structures range from a few tonnes of steel on the seabed to a complete platform constructed from around 30000 tonnes of steel framework. The task of removal requires extremely detailed and careful planning as well as substantial resources. Explosives are very efficient tools for cutting steel underwater and have been the preferred choice of many offshore operators for over 40 years. Also explosives offer the flexibility of a single controlled cut or multiple simultaneous cuts for remote and safe toppling of very large structures [129]. 

The depletion time of a resource obtained with Equation 13.13 cannot be used directly in the construction of the sustainability parameter and, therefore, it is first converted to a factor that can be viewed as an expression of resource abundance on a scale of zero to one (Figure 13.17). For a resource i with a depletion time x, the abundance factor a, is defined as... 

Finally, the concept of depletion times, as it is used in the construction of the sustainability parameter, is also suitable to include the sustainability of production of facilities needed to harvest resources. For instance, solar energy may in principle have a depletion time of billions of years, but the production of photovoltaic cells usually requires some very scarce elements for which the depletion times are much smaller. The sustainability of using solar energy harvested with photovoltaic cells should then be based on these latter depletion times and not on the depletion time of solar energy itself. 

FIGURE 75.2 A summary of the major constructs of the Elemental Resource Model, emphasizing the categorization of performance resources at the basic element level into four life-sustaining, environmental interface, central processing, and information domains. 

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the coal enterprise safety management ability, in order to achieve safety, efficient, green, economic and social sustainable this comprehensive goal, chiefly researches five elements including strategy, institution, personnel, external environment and internal resources, constructs the coal enterprise safety management ability evaluation model. 

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