In recent times, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been evolved in globally as an analytical tool that systematically and holistically investigates cumulative environmental impacts associated with the entire building lifecycle from its cradle-to grave. Moreover, LCA approach has become a well-rooted concept internationally as a decision making tool due to the collaborative activities between main five (05) stakeholders i.e. academia, government, construction industry, civil society, and the natural environment. In contrast, it is difficult to find evidence on the application of LCA in Sri Lankan construction industry. Also, there is increasing interest in applying LCA, as Sri Lankan construction industry has been criticised due to the environmental pollution with the escalation of upcoming building projects. Hence, this study aimed to conduct a desk study by reviewing existing literature to disclose the activities, which the developed countries followed to integrate LCA into construction practice pertaining to aforesaid five stakeholder's contributions. Literature findings highlighted that, academia have to undertake and disseminate fact-based and comprehensive research on the field of LCA in order to popularize the concept of LCA while government bodies, construction industry, civil society and natural environment have to take actions to embed LCA to the environmental regulations and environmental planning as a core element to take voluntary actions to build ecologically sustainable constructions by using LCA as a decision making technique. Environmental modeling software packages have to be introduced as a collaborative activity of academia, construction industry and natural environment to make it possible to integrate LCA to the construction industry.

The construction industry plays a significant role in the economic growth of a country. Nevertheless, the construction industry has created severe adverse environmental impacts. Therefore, green building technologies are implemented to alleviate the adverse effects of the construction industry. Using green materials instead of conventional building materials with high environmental impacts has been identified as one such implementation. However, there seems to be much confusion in defining green building materials. Hence, it is vital to explore the features of green building materials. Therefore, this article investigates green features that qualify the building materials as green building materials. A qualitative research approach was selected as the research methodology, and semi-structured interviews were conducted with seven green building experts. The data was analysed using content analysis. Findings revealed that recycled content, local availability of materials, embodied energy of materials, use of rapidly renewable material, usage of waste material for the production process, material wastage content in the production process and pollution prevention in the production process are the green features. The study results guide the identification of green building materials that can replace the materials with poor environmental sustainability.

LCA is a method that systematically evaluates environmental impacts attributed to the building by quantifying environmental inputs and outputs over the lifecycle of buildings. LCA facilitates a sophisticated assessment procedure to promote eco-efficient designs to reduce environmental impacts. Although building-related LCAs are well-rooted in developed counties, it is challenging to disclose evidence of LCA application in Sri Lanka as a developing country. Therefore, this study aims to compare drivers that promote the application of LCA in developed countries and Sri Lanka to determine the deviation between two contexts. The qualitative research approach was adopted, and expert interviews were conducted with ten experts from Sri Lanka and nine LCA experts representing developed countries. The results indicated that 'identifying opportunities to improve environmental sustainability,' discovering energy-saving opportunities' etc. are the mostly identified drivers related to developed countries. In contrast, the mostly identified drivers in Sri Lanka were limited to two as 'growing industrial interest to build more green buildings' and 'as a new tool for R&D'. Initiation of strong government policies and effective incentive mechanisms, rising awareness on LCA, etc. identified as strategies to bridge the deviation between Sri Lanka from developed countries context in the implementation of LCA.