To help limit the environmental impact concrete, a significant research effort has been directed towards the development alternative binders and fillers. The use of these alternative materials has sought to minimise environmental impact either by minimising the use of Ordinary Portland Cement, or by incorporating wastes and by-products as fillers. While done with the intention of minimising environmental impact, in the vast majority of existing studies, no explicit environmental modelling has been conducted. This is significant because when life-cycle assessment is conducted, it has been shown that these new materials can have more significant impacts than the materials they are intended to replace. In this article we present lessons learned from conducting detailed life-cycle assessment to quantify the global warming potential of more than 2115 mix designs, this is done with the intention of showing factors that are critical to consider when performing this form of analysis.
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