The construction industry not only consumes more raw materials and energy than any other economic activity, but also generates the largest fraction of waste, known as construction and demolition waste (CDW). This waste has major environmental implications, most notably in South American countries such as Colombia, where it is handled inappropriately. In this study, the management processes that are currently used for fractions of construction and demolition waste (CDW) generated in Ibagué (Colombia) were evaluated and the environmental impacts of the management of 1 kg of CDW were calculated. Other CDW management alternatives were evaluated, in which the percentage of the fraction of the waste and/or the treatment or management process that is used was modified to determine its environmental and economic viability. The information was obtained through telephone interviews and visits to recycling plants, construction companies, quarries, government entities, and inert landfills in the country. It was completed with secondary sources and the Ecoinvent v.2.2 database. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology and SimaPro 8 software were used to calculate the environmental impacts. An economic study of each management process and each alternative was also carried out. A comparison of the alternatives revealed the current alternative contributes most to the environmental impacts in all categories. The results of this study indicate that the most beneficial alternative in environmental and economic terms in Ibagué (Colombia) is that in which 100% of the metals are recovered, 100% of excavated earth is reused, and 100% of the stone waste is recycled (alternative 3). When a sensitivity analysis was carried out with different distances (30 km and 50 km), alternative 3 continued to be the most favorable.
