Life cycle assessment of shipping container home: A sustainable construction
Shipping containers are manufactured exceedingly rigid and strong complying specifications for freight purposes. After ending freight spell at sea and road, shipping containers are just occupying huge spaces at ports and other places. Among all the reuses, the recent technology and construction practices have set the containers for home building purposes. This research investigates the recent usage of containers for home buildings, and determines its constructability in Australian building industry. It also investigates the effects of carbon footprint and other life cycle environmental impacts (LCEI) Life cycle assessment (LCA) approach was used to evaluate 6 LCEI category indicators: cumulative energy demand (CED) water use, solid waste, global warming potential (GWP) acidification potential, and eutrophication potential. A container framed house is used as the base case to compare with other previous studies to evaluate the differences in those LCEI. According to Building Code Australia, the container house was complied with 6 star energy rating. Results show that operation phase has the most dominating impact for all the indicators except water use and solid waste generation. For all the impact categories, the overall contributions of the whole life cycle impacts have increased significantly if the design life of a building is increased to 100 years.