Nuevos criterios ecológicos para la concesión de la etiqueta ecológica europea a los revestimientos rígidos

El objeto de este artículo es dar a conocer los nuevos criterios ecológicos que deberán cumplir los revestimientos rígidos para la consecución de la etiqueta ecológica comunitaria. La etiqueta ecológica europea constituye un sistema de certificación único, cuyo objetivo es ayudar a los consumidores europeos a identificar los productos y servicios más ecológicos y respetuosos del medio ambiente. Sin embargo, a pesar de que es un instrumento voluntario de ayuda a las empresas para mejorar su actuación ambiental y promocionar sus productos y servicios que respetan el entorno, su uso no es generalizado dentro del sector de revestimiento rígido. A nivel europeo, a fecha de hoy existen 385 modelos de baldosas rígidas con etiqueta ecológica concedida según la Decisión 2002/272/CE, distribuidos en 20 empresas de Italia, Francia y España. A nivel nacional, únicamente existen 11 modelos de baldosas con la Etiqueta Ecológica Europea repartidos en 2 empresa

Declaraciones Ambientales según ISO14025 en el sector de la construcción. Parte 2: Recubrimientos cerámicos

Este artículo tiene como finalidad aportar información relativa a los Programas, tanto generales como sectoriales, que han desarrollado Reglas de Categoría de Producto (RCP) para diferentes tipos de recubrimientos cerámicos, y mostrar ejemplos de Declaraciones Ambientales publicadas relativas a los mismos.This article is intended to provide information about Programs, both general and sector-based, that have developed Product Category Rules (PCR) to different types of ceramic tilings, and show examples of Environmental Declarations about them

Declaraciones Ambientales según ISO 14025 en el sector de la construcción. Parte 1: Marco normativo y metodología

Este artículo se centra en las Declaraciones Ambientales reguladas por la norma ISO 14025 (2006) en el sector de la construcción.This article focuses on the Environmental Declarations regulated by ISO 14025 (2006) standard in the construction industry

Influence of the climate zone in the selection of thermal insulation materials from an eco-efficiency perspective

Comunicació presentada al XXII Congreso Internacional de Dirección e Ingeniería de Proyectos. CIDIP 2018 (Madrid, 11-13 de Julio 2018)The potential of thermal insulation materials in reducing the energy demand of buildings is key element in meeting the regulatory requirements for energy efficiency of buildings. Their thickness and thermal properties affect the thermal resistance of the building envelope, which depend on the climate zone where it is located. This communication presents a methodology that allows to identify, from the environmental and economic point of view, the eco-efficiency of the use of insulation materials to meet the regulatory requirements in terms of energy savings established by the CTE and to compare the results for the different climatic zones of the Spanish territory. The methodology is applied to a single-family house in which a total of eleven thermal insulation materials are compared, both conventional and emerging derived from natural products, and five climatic zones with different winter climate severity.El potencial de los materiales de aislamiento térmico en la reducción de la demanda energética de los edificios resulta clave para cumplir con las exigencias normativas en materia de eficiencia energética. Su espesor y propiedades térmicas condicionan la resistencia térmica de la envolvente del edificio, que dependen de la zona climática donde se ubica. Esta comunicación presenta una metodología que permite identificar, desde el punto de vista ambiental y económico, la ecoeficiencia del uso de materiales de aislamiento para cumplir las exigencias normativas en materia de ahorro de energía establecidas por el CTE y realizar una comparativa para las diferentes zonas climáticas del territorio español. La metodología se aplica a una vivienda unifamiliar en la que se comparan un total de once materiales de aislamiento térmico, tanto convencionales como emergentes derivados de productos naturales, y cinco zonas climáticas con diferente severidad climática de invierno

Tools for assessing qualitatively the level of circularity of organisations: Applicability to different sectors

The transition towards a circular economy (CE) has been identified as one of the biggest challenges for our society in general and for organisations in particular. In this context, organisations have begun to call for methods to measure their level of circularity and therefore, in recent years, various specific CE tools have been developed. The objective of this study is to analyse the applicability, utility and user-friendliness of CE tools that autonomously measure the level of circularity of organisations by using qualitative data. For this purpose, seven qualitative CE tools (CAS2.0, CE-Diagnosis, CircularTRANS, Circulytics, CM-FLAT, INEDIT and MATChE) are selected and applied to four organisations (two belonging to the service sector and two to the production sector). The results show that, due to the absence of uniformity, regularity, and singularity in the CE assessment, the circularity indicators included in each CE tool analysed are different; therefore, the level of circularity calculated for each specific organisation by means of the different CE tools are comparable. Moreover, the CE tools are heterogeneous in terms of content, length and number of questions; and they do not incorporate the specific characteristics of the different sectors of the organisations analysed. Furthermore, after gathering the opinions of managers regarding the applicability of each CE tool to each organisation, it is observed that the existing CE tools can be useful but need further development. For these reasons, further research and development of standardised sectoral CE tools that consider sector specificities and allow organisations to obtain accurate and comparable results is needed.Funding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Jaume

Consumer practices regarding the purchase, use, willingness to repair, and disposal of small electric and electronic equipment: A Spanish survey on kettles

Repair is one of the main strategies to extend the lifetime of products in the circular economy framework. With the aim of identifying current consumer practices toward the purchase, use, and end of life of electric and electronic equipment (EEE), including willingness to repair, maintenance, and final disposal, a survey is designed and implemented online, taking kettles as an application case. Regarding current strategies for extending the lifespan of these items, a general lack of maintenance and low levels of reparability or reuse have been detected. Disposal patterns show that nearly half of all kettles disposed of were still functioning. Nevertheless, a future willingness to repair these items has been identified, either by users themselves or at repair centers, if the manufacturer provides the means to do so. Finally, the results reveal that when consumers purchase a kettle, the price and then the energy efficiency score are the main priorities affecting their purchasing decisions, taking priority over the reparability score. These results can help in the design of more focused and direct strategies to promote the reparability of small household appliances, encourage the authorities to regulate the new reparability score in a more efficient way, and improve the way that information is transmitted to users/consumers.Funding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Jaume

Gestión de proyectos con ProjectLibre TM

Departament d'Enginyeria Mecànica i Construcció. Codis assignatura: SJA017 i SJF00

Prioritising organisational circular economy strategies by applying the partial order set theory: Tool and case study

This study presents a methodology to solve circular economy multiple indicators system decision-making problems by applying the Partial Order Set Theory (POSET). To this end, a user-friendly tool was developed to allow the prioritisation of alternative scenarios or circularity strategies based on the value that each of them takes for different circular economy indicators (both quantitative and qualitative), but avoiding processes involving aggregation and weight among the indicators. The developed tool also makes it possible to model different restrictions that facilitate its adaptation to any case study and the incorporation of the results into the decision-making process. Moreover, it allows a graphical representation of the results to be obtained by using Hasse diagrams. Finally, the developed tool was validated by means of its application to a case study with the aim of prioritising circular economy strategies in an organisation belonging to the construction sector. Specifically, this organisation presented some opportunities for improvement, mainly related to the use of recycled and recirculated materials and effluents, waste recycling, energy efficiency and the proximity of suppliers, among others. The sensitivity analysis of the considered restrictions showed not only the robustness of the results obtained with the tool but also its great influence in circular economy multiple indicators decision-making solutions.Funding for open access charge: CRUE-Universitat Jaume

Variables influencing the energy consumption of the residential buiding park:analysis based on real consumption data

Comunicació presentada al 23rd International Congress on Project Management and Engineering (Málaga, 10-12 July 2019).El constante aumento del consumo de energía en el sector de la edificación residencial tiene importantes consecuencias en términos de impacto ambiental y dependencia energética. Numerosos estudios analizan los factores que explican esta tendencia basándose fundamentalmente en datos de consumos estimados a partir de simulaciones dinámicas mediante herramientas informáticas. Éstas habitualmente consideran las características constructivas de la vivienda, pero dejan fuera del alcance los hábitos de uso de la vivienda por parte de sus ocupantes. Este trabajo analiza el comportamiento energético del parque residencial existente a partir de datos de consumo real. Para ello, se ha propuesto una metodología dividida en tres etapas. La Etapa I aborda la recogida de datos de consumos energéticos reales de una muestra de viviendas y de sus características, tanto edificatorias como de hábitos de uso, a través de una encuesta diseñada para tal efecto. En la Etapa II la información recogida se disgrega en un conjunto de covariables (características de la vivienda y hábitos de uso) y variables respuesta (consumo energético). La Etapa III desarrolla un modelo estadístico que permite analizar cómo las covariables afectan a las variables respuesta y, por tanto, identificar aquellos aspectos que tienen mayor influencia en el consumo energético real.The upward trend in the residential sector of energy use has significant consequences in terms of environmental impacts and energy dependence. Numerous studies analysed the factors that explain this trend, nonetheless they were mainly based on estimated consumption data obtained from dynamic simulations tools. These also usually considered the construction characteristics of the building, but they missed behavioural patterns related to users’ dwellings. This paper analyses the energy performance of existing residential stocks based on real consumption data. To do this, a methodology divided into three stages has been proposed. Stage I addresses the collection of real energy consumption data from a sample of dwellings and its characteristics, both construction features and occupants’ behavioural habits, through a survey designed for this purpose. In Stage II, the information collected is disaggregated into a set of covariates (characteristics of the dwelling and occupants’ habits) and response variables (energy consumption data). Stage III develops a statistical model that allows analysing how covariates affect the response variables and, therefore, identifying those most influential factors on dwelling’s real energy consumption

Comparitive carbon footprint od organizations using different available tools

Comunicació presentada al XXII Congreso Internacional de Dirección e Ingeniería de Proyectos. CIDIP 2018 (Madrid, 11-13 de Julio 2018)Although Recommendation 2013/179/EU promotes the use of the environmental footprint to assess and communicate the environmental performance of organizations throughout their life cycle, they are choosing, as a starting point, the carbon footprint. In Spain, different tools have been developed for this purpose, among which the "Carbon Footprint Calculator" of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment of the Government of Spain and the "Carbon Footprint Calculation Tool" of IHOBE-Public Society of the Basque Government stand out. At a more general level, commercial Life Cycle Analysis tools such as SimaPro or Gabi, also allow the calculation of the carbon footprint using international commercial inventory databases. The objective of this communication is to compare the results obtained when the same organization is modeled using different carbon footprint tools. The ceramic sector has been chosen as a case study. For this, primary data belonging to different companies of this industrial sector has been collected and different mitigation actions proposed. After modeling each one using the carbon footprint available tools, a comparative analysis has been undertaken.A pesar de que la Recomendación 2013/179/UE promueve el uso de la huella ambiental para medir y comunicar el comportamiento ambiental de organizaciones a lo largo de su ciclo de vida, éstas se están decantando, como paso inicial, por la huella de carbono. A nivel nacional se han desarrollado diferentes herramientas con este fin, entre las que destacan la “Calculadora de Huella de Carbono” del Ministerio de Agricultura y Pesca, Alimentación y Medio Ambiente del Gobierno de España y la “Herramienta de Cálculo de Huella de Carbono” de IHOBE-Sociedad Pública del Gobierno Vasco. A nivel más general, herramientas comerciales de Análisis de Ciclo de Vida como SimaPro o Gabi, permiten también el cálculo de la huella de carbono a partir de bases de datos de inventario comerciales a nivel internacional. El objetivo de esta comunicación es comparar los resultados que se obtienen al modelar una misma organización con las diferentes herramientas disponibles. Como caso práctico se ha elegido el sector cerámico. Para ello, se ha realizado una recopilación de datos primarios de diferentes empresas del sector y diferentes propuestas de acciones de mitigación, que se han modelado en cada una de estas herramientas para, finalmente, analizar comparativamente los resultados obtenidos