How Green Are You? Economic and Environmental Sustainability: Assessing the Global Warming Potential (GMP) of Your Underground Infrastructure

As municipalities across the United States and Canada focus on delivering the essentials of clean water, efficient wastewater treatment, and judicious control of storm water, government officials, engineers, and the companies that install, operate, and maintain piping infrastructure need to understand that a life cycle systems approach. Sustainability concerns apply to many critical resources such as water. On a per capita basis, the U.S. leads the world in water usage, with a substantial portion of water consumed/leaked by infrastructure systems. Because of water availability, competing water demands, and changing hydrologic conditions, the U.S. Department of Interior predicts that multiple water conflicts will occur in the western U.S. by 2025. In addition, decades of excessive demands on ecological systems have reduced their capacities to absorb and process emissions and wastes. Sustainable water infrastructure is vital to providing the American public with clean and safe water and helping to ensure the environmental, economic, and social health of the nation’s communities. The increasing interest in sustainability has led to the development of sustainability assessment tools such as life cycle assessments (LCA) analyzing the embodied energy and environmental impacts. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a tool used to identify the environmental impacts of a product, process, or activity over the entire lifespan of the product. LCA studies also quantify and interpret the environmental flows to and from the environment (including emissions to air, water, and land, as well as the consumption of energy and other material resources) over the entire life cycle of a product (or process or service). By including the impacts throughout the product life cycle, LCA provides a comprehensive view of the environmental aspects of the product and an accurate picture of the true environmental tradeoffs in product selection.