Mineral resources in life cycle assessment

Mineral resources have been used by humanity since ancient times. However, the diversity of resources used has drastically increased with the growth of high technology products, especially those in sectors dealing with the environment and the energy transition. Moreover, the overall amount of extracted resources is significantly high and only rising. Some of these resources are defined as "critical" by the European Union, as they are of great importance for these economic sectors and their supply is a growing concern. Although the environmental question of resource depletion has been widely debated within the life cycle assessment (LCA) scientific community, a clear consensus has not been reached. Combining resource depletion, resource dissipation and criticality in Life Cycle Assessment is therefore a key challenge that needs to be addressed to better assess the ecodesign of future products in regard to the area of protection "Resources".

This book provides a synthesis of the