Assessing steel buildings circularity through the synergy of LCA and MFA

The transition of the building sector to a circular economy is thus of primordial importance to mitigate both problems. Material flow analysis (MFA) and life cycle assessment (LCA) are two of the most known and diffuse methodologies to quantify the environmental and economic impacts of the built environment through a circular approach. While there have been advancements over the last decade in the implementation of various circular strategies, the building industry urgently needs to implement more effective recycling and reuse procedures to lower the rate of consumption by applying a circular economy framework, overcoming barriers and limits, such as data quality and availability used in the assessment process. This paper provides a critical review on methodologies to evaluate circularity and sustainability for steel buildings and explores potential synergies between MFA and LCA to define a hybrid (MFA/LCA) methodology for the assessment of the circularity of buildings over the complete life cycle.