The unfortunate economic situation involving Spain and the European Union is, among other factors, the result of intensive construction activity over recent years. The excessive consumption of natural resources, together with the impact caused by the uncontrolled dumping of untreated C&D waste in illegal landfills have caused environmental pollution and a deterioration of the landscape. The objective of this research was to generate a selective classification and quantification model of C&D waste based on the material resources consumed in the construction of residential buildings, either new or renovated, namely the Conventional Constructive Model (CCM). A practical example carried out on ten residential buildings in Seville, Spain, enabled the identification and quantification of the C&D waste generated in their construction and the origin of the waste, in terms of the building material from which it originated and its impact for every m(2) constructed. This model enables other researchers to establish comparisons between the various improvements proposed for the minimization of the environmental impact produced by building a CCM, new corrective measures to be proposed in future policies that regulate the production and management of C&D waste generated in construction from the design stage to the completion of the construction process, and the establishment of sustainable management for C&D waste and for the selection of materials for the construction on projected or renovated buildings.

Abstract:The objective of this work is twofold: to determine the scope of the tools currently available for the assessment of sustainability of structures in Spanish legislation; and to identify environmental aspects that have yet to be covered, especially in the case of foundations and of measures aimed at the structural rehabilitation of singular buildings. To this end, the method proposed in the Spanish Instruction of Structural Concrete is applied to the particular case of the supported foundations of the Cylindrical and Colonel buildings in the construction of the new Faculties of Law and of Work Sciences, of the University of Seville during the period between 2005 and 2008. This case was chosen for its special uniqueness and for its inclusion of environmental aspects that remain outside the scope of existing methods.Most of these aspects are also of great relevance in structural rehabilitation activities carried out in urban environments and neighbourhoods, where a major surge is currently underway due to the economic crisis that has hit projects of newly constructed buildings. By virtue of the work carried out in recent years in the field of sustainability and the environment by several research groups at the University of Seville, a number of alternatives are proposed for the quantification of those aspects that remain to be considered. These techniques are based on tools that allow the agents to intervene in a flexible and effective way in the project implementation phase.