In the modern and developing world, the construction industry is of utmost importance, and it has brought economic development along with the advancement of technology. However, the environmental impact of the industry should not be neglected, as it is one of the highest contributors of global emissions. This research aims to formulate a cellular concrete by using shredded plastic waste (SPW) as sand replacement and the use of foam for generating pore spaces in the finished product. A total of nine different mixes of varying SPW replacement at 10%, 25%, and 50% and varying foam content by total volume (10%, 15%, 20%) are tested. The parameters investigated are the density, compressive strength, and specific heat capacity of the mix designs, along with the mix’s environmental impact by conducting a life cycle assessment (LCA). It was observed that as the amount of SPW is increased, the compressive strength and density decreases. However, the addition of foam provides a slight increase in the compressive strength when the SPW replacement is at 25% and 50%. The specific heat capacity of the concrete is inversely proportional to its density. The overall environmental impact was also determined by conducting an LCA using SimaPro version 9.6, wherein the the top priority categories for evaluation is the concrete’s impact on global warming potential (GWP), fine particulate matter formation (FPMF), ozone formation in terms of human health (OFHH) and terrestrial ecosystems (OFTE), terrestrial acidification (TA), and terrestrial ecotoxicity (TET).
The top impact categories were chosen as these had the most foreground processes, which indicates that changes in the process of manufacturing concrete will have a greater impact to lessening its contributions to the said categories. Overall, the optimum mix design is M-50P-20F, which uses 50% SPW as sand replacement and 20% of the total volume of concrete being foam. This resulted in a compressive strength of 3.59 MPa, which is within the minimum requirement of The Philippine National Standards (PNS) for partition walls, dry bulk density of 1045 kg/m³ and specific heat capacity of 1.4484 kJ/kg°C. It also performed the best in terms of environmental impact as shown in the LCA as it contributed the least in GWP, FPMF, OFHH, OFTE, and TA compared to all other mixes including the control mix