Comparison of life-cycle assessment: environmental and cost approach to soil improvement Available to Purchase

Dispersive soils became a worldwide major concern due to its high susceptibility to erosion, which is responsible for ravines and tunnels, among others problems. Commonly, ordinary Portland cement or even hydrated lime is employed to solve the aforementioned drawbacks. Nonetheless, alternative treatments have been suggested to provide options to replace natural resources. Therefore, this study aims to compare two distinct soil stabilisation methods, namely, dispersive soil-hydrated lime and dispersive soil–ground waste glass–carbide lime through an environmental life cycle and life-cycle cost approach. The proposed assessment was carried out according to life-cycle inventories responsible to stabilise 1.0 m³ of the two distinct mixtures. Among the 18 impact categories evaluated in the environmental life-cycle assessment, the alternative binder was less impacting than the traditional hydrated lime over the entire impact categories. Concerning the cost approach, the traditional stabilisation based on hydrated lime had an approximate total cost of US$12.02, whereas the alternative stabilisation methodology a cost of US$39.58. Thereby, ground waste glass–carbide lime binder has potential to be known as an alternative environment-friendly binder to soil stabilisation, succeeding in both mechanical and environment performances but being unsuccessful in terms of costs until the present moment.