From Buildings’ End of Life to Aggregate Recycling under a Circular Economic Perspective: A Comparative Life Cycle Assessment Case Study

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper well presents case studies of recovery aggregates from C&D waste coming from buildings' demolition and compares environmental performances of processes with LCA.

From a circular economy perspective, as the title states, in my opinion the study should be supported by an economic assessment of the process in order to understand economic performances of secondary aggregates compared to the primary ones. One of the main obstacles of making a "quality" recovery of C&D waste in substitution of primary materials, in this case aggregates coming from quarries, is represented by their economic sustainability.

I suggest authors to refer, within the text, to the economic feasability of the processes and of final recycled aggregates produced compared to the primary ones.

 

Author Response

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Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

this research topic is interesting and I particularly appreciate that the Authors also performed a sensitivity analysis. I do not consider it too lucky that the LCA analyzes were performed using OpenLCA.

 

Professional and formal deficiencies:

• The reference to the literature in the text is formally incorrect.
• I ask the Authors to refer to more recent COMs as well.
• ISO standards for LCA were not cited by the Authors.
• DOI numbers are missing from the References.
• The figures are illustrative. However, the indices are missing in Tables 2,4.
• Since the life cycle assessment was not done from cradle-to-grave by the Authors, I suggest that this keyword be removed by the Authors. EoL stage was examined for different scenarios, i.e. gate-to-grave analysis was performed.
• In conclusion, it would be useful to present numerical scientific results as well. I miss the same thing in Abstract to the point of a few sentences.
• It is important that the Authors review the formal requirements of the journal again!

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Thanks for submitting your manuscript to Sustainability MDPI

Please find attached my revisions/suggestions 

Author Response

The manuscript attachment is missing.  The editor contacted the reviewer several times, but did not receive a reply.

Round 2

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear Authors,

thank you for accepting and following my suggestions. I can accept this article in this form. Congratulations!