LCA of 3 Different Building Materials for Walls. Case: Housing in Mexico. Victor A. Arvizu-Piña (1)*, Gabriel Gomez-Azpeitia (1), Julio Mendoza (1), Pablo Arena (2) (1) Facultad de Arquitectura y Diseño, Universidad de Colima, Mexico (2) Universidad TecnologicaNacional, F.R. Mendoza, Argentina * arqarvizup@gmail.com Keywords: CO 2 emissions, Life Cycle Assessment, wall building materials, economical housing, biomass combustion . Introduction The housing built in series in Mexico has not considered in its design process the environmental and energy aspects, as a result, the materials used to build are always the cheapest, and not necessarily the most appropriate to the environment and the local climate. Consequently the environmental consequences as the production of solid waste, the disposal of residual waters and the emission of gases usually go unnoticed by the authorities in the matter, thus greatly contributing to the environmental problem of the country, and very especially regarding the global warming. For such a reason the Comisión Nacional de Vivienda CONAVI (National Commission of Housing) formulated a call for participation in order to finance research projects that could solve the omission of the environmental aspects in the housing sector in Mexico. The project “Life Cycle Assessment of Economical Housing in Mexico. Case of Study: Wall Systems in the City of Colima”, which results are presented in this paper, was one of those approved. The project is based on the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method, since it produces reliable and objective information with scientific fundamentals and covers all the phases of the life cycle of the products to analyze [1]. In this research, an analysis about CO 2 emissions produced during all the life cycle of the main building materials used in walls of economical housingis presented. A case study in Colima, in the Pacific coast of Mexico, has been considered. Objectives The main objective of this project is to contribute to the sustainable development paradigm of housing sector in Mexico, by means of the adaptation of the LCA methodological process, in order to ease the work of housing promoters, designers and building material manufacturers, through the knowledge of the environmental impacts caused by technologies, procedures or materials used in walls construction. Method As afore it is mentioned, this study has been based on the LCA method, according to the ISO 14000 series [2], [3], [4], [5] and [6]. The inventory of incoming and salient flows, and the identification of environmental impacts were conducted by the aid of the LCA specialized software SimaPro 7.1 and the database Ecoinvent license (v1+2). Data coming from specialized literature or even data generated as part of the research were also used. Scopes Systems to analyze: The walls of the economical housings in Colima are often built with three systems based on the following materials: Traditional burned clay brick: Size: 5x14x28cm. Weight 2.837 Kg. The burn process is carried out by the combustion of wood and waste of coconut (Fig. 1). Figure 1: Traditional brick of burned clay