ecoinvent Forum Archive

Anyone knows the difference between:
- "market for waste concrete" (positive IPCC LCIA result) and
- "treatment of waste concrete, not reinforced, collection for final disposal" (negative IPCC LCIA result)?

This has been my understanding: if waste treatment is considered in a dataset, a negative flow of the latter is used, while the former is for getting recycled materials.
However, I looked into the activity "market for waste concrete", and found it has -1 "treatment of waste concrete, inert material landfill" - this is contradictory with my previous understanding that this represents recycled concrete.

So now I'm a bit confused, and anyone can help here?

Dear xiaoshir,

Thank you for your thread. A market has a negative reference product (RP) if the product is classified as waste. An ordinary transforming activity also has a negative RP if it is treating a waste, thus it is a treatment activity. You can read more about this in the following link:

https://www.ecoinvent.org/support/faqs/methodology-of-ecoinvent-3/why-is-the-reference-product-of-the-treatment-activities-negative.html

A treatment is acCounting for the environmental burden of disposing of a waste while the market represents a mix of possibly different waste treatments that treat this waste in the given geography. For instance incineration of waste PET in Austria is accounting for the environmental impacts of incinerating waste PET in Austria while market for waste PET in Austria represents the average treatment waste PET is receiving in Austria and that comprises from incineration, landfill etc.

I hope this is clearer now, otherwise please feel free to text us at: support@ecoinvent.org

Best regards,

Avraam Symeonidis

Data analyst, ecoinvent association

So in order to consider treatment of waste concrete in a foreground dataset, I should have a negative flow of "treatment of waste concrete, not reinforced, collection for final disposal", which will give me a positive burden of waste treatment right?

If yes to the above, then in which situation will dataset "market for waste concrete" be used? Based on your response, it seems that it will be used when getting "recycled" concrete from a market of different treatment activities, right? In this particular case, how can we get recycled concrete from the trearment of landfill?