Sustainability Assessment of a Day-Care Service Provided in a Rural Environment
摘要
Nowadays, research works associated with sustainable design should be not only focused on the analysis of environmentally friendly products. In a wide number of cases, the combination of products and services interconnected is required in order to provide value and utility to users and consumers. In addition, sustainability is a widespread concept that transcends environmental considerations, encompassing social and economic dimensions. Thus, a triple sustainability framework balancing environmental preservation, economic development and social well-being should be applied. The objective of this work is to evaluate the sustainability of a day-care service located in a rural zone of Spain. The study is carried out in accordance with the four steps required by the Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) methodology. The indicators selected for each sustainability dimension are global warming potential (GWP), working time (Tw), and execution costs (Ce). In addition, a life cycle perspective has been considered so that the creation and end-of-life stages of the day-care building required in the service provision were analyzed. Results obtained for the combined system day-care service and day-care building shows that the service causes a relatively more significant impact than the construction product taking into account the total operating period over which it is developed. The relative incidence of the provision stage is also highlighted as well as the impact in each sustainability dimension. Thus, the application of improvement strategies could be conveniently focused.