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In recent years, construction and use of buildings in Spain accounted for more than 40% of energy consumption, 36% of CO2 emissions, 50% of material extractions from the earth’s crust and 25% of the solid waste generated. Optimizing the resource requirement in existing buildings is a key step in the task of reaching the community targets for 2030: 27% improvement in energy efficiency and 40% of reduction of greenhouse gases. For this, it is necessary to analyse them through environmental and economic indicators, so that the magnitude of the impacts can be qualified and quantified from the Building Life Cycle (BLC), from its conception, through the extraction of raw materials, for the manufacture of the materials, until the demolition of the building. The paper focuses on the study of residential buildings in Andalusia, covering its entire useful life, from its conception until the time of its demolition or end of life. As a case study, the Ecological Footprint (EF) indicator is applied to a residential project, to calculate the impacts during the BLC.

Construction activity generates a large amount of waste, causing environmental and economic impacts due to waste elimination without recycling or reusing these materials. In this research, the incorporation of wastes from different sectors (biomass, power plants, construction and demolition process) in concrete with good fire resistance is studied. The chemical composition and grading curve of these wastes are determined. Fire resistance blocks are manufactured with a high percentage of waste in their composition. The new materials are then subjected to several tests in order to analyse their fire resistance, mechanical properties, thermal conductivity, leaching, and radioactivity. A new facade solution is developed by changing traditional materials for some of the new recycled materials, and their technical features are compared. All four wastes studied decreased the density and mechanical strength of a 28-day-old block, and a higher water ratio is needed for block preparation. On the other hand, the blocks’ fire resistance increased, decreasing their thermal conductivity. The properties of the new materials validate their possible usage for nonstructural applications such as blocks or prefabricated concrete panels for facades and inside partitioning, showing good mechanical and thermal performance. Their use does not represent a significant risk to the environment.

With the increasing activity in the building sector in the last decade, construction has become a major consumer of natural resources. This resource consumption has been traditionally accounted for through life cycle assessment and similar approaches. In this chapter, a methodology to apply the carbon footprint indicator to a building project is proposed in order to predict the emissions generated by the construction work. The methodology takes into account the resources used and the waste generated. Thus, a number of factors involved in the calculations are first defined, followed by the methodology to determine the carbon footprint for each of the elements into which it is divided (i.e., energy, water, food, mobility, construction materials, and waste). Finally, the methodology is applied to a case study corresponding to the urbanization and building construction of a representative building type in Andalusia (Spain) when the building is in the planning stage.