minimization goals and subsidize the overall disposal costs of the buildings, thus

lowering funding requirements (Falk et al. 1999). However, there is a question as to

whether 100% manual deconstruction of military barracks will yield optimum economic

and environmental savings, particularly for those barracks built before World War II.

 This project, funded by the U.S. DOD, sought to determine the optimum levels of

manual deconstruction and mechanical demolition of pre-World War II barracks using a

life cycle approach. Life cycle analysis (LCA) is a method that enables quantification of

the environmental and public health impacts of an activity or product throughout its

entire life. This "cradle-to-grave" approach is based on the knowledge that each stage in

a product's life has potential to contribute to its environmental impacts. Considering a

building's life cycle, these stages include raw material extraction and processing, material

manufacture (e.g., wood harvesting and milling), transportation, installation (e.g.,

construction), operation and maintenance, and, ultimately, recycling and waste

management (e.g., salvaging of materials for recycling or reuse) (Lippiatt 1998).

 The focus of this paper is the life cycle comparison of four identical World War II-

era barracks. Data were carefully collected from a previous study on three Ft. McClellan

barracks, deconstructed using different methods of manual effort that were accompanied

by different time requirements for manual involvement. The specific emissions and

resulting environmental impacts and cost savings or burdens of the three scenarios are

compared to traditional mechanical demolition using LCA methods and are reported

herein.