Lithium is a critical raw material for the energy transition and the salar brine deposits of South America host ∼70% of global resources. However, there are concerns regarding water use, and the associated impacts, of lithium production from these deposits. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is becoming increasingly prevalent in the analysis of raw materials sustainability, but current methods are regarded as unsatisfactory for assessing water use impacts related to lithium production from salar deposits. This work explores the challenges and opportunities for improvement in this context. We outline how the classification and assessment of water types could be improved and identify Water Availability Assessments, groundwater specific CFs, salar-specific methodologies and multiple mid-point indicators as areas for further investigation. This will aid the development of LCA methodology and enable an improved assessment of the sustainability of lithium production from salar deposits in South America and by extension help decouple decarbonisation efforts from negative impacts.

Transport infrastructure allows society to function. Such systems continuously improve through manufacturing transformation and technology upgrading. However, its metabolism mechanism of material degradation and quantities from consumption to obsolescence remains unclear. Here we estimate the recycling potential of typical large-scale public transport vehicles (LPTV) in China, in particular, predicting the end-of-life quantity of railway and aviation equipment between 2000 and 2050. Their total recycling potential has been experiencing rapid growth. The total obsolescence mass in 2020 exceeded 33 million tons, and it is expected to reach another 74 million tons by 2050, roughly twice the amount in 2020. By 2050, waste LPTV in China will contain at least 72 million tons of steel, 838 kilotons of aluminum, 2539 tons of titanium, and 223 tons of neodymium. We also compare waste LPTV to e-waste and end-of-life private vehicles. Interestingly, their growth of generation quantity indicates a distinct industry succession from an industrial ecological perspective.

Abstract Driven by industrial development and technology substitution and, high-end equipment has inevitably become a powerful engine driving the upgrade of the manufacturing industry. However, its metabolism mechanism and quantity in stock and end-of-life stream remain unclear. Here we estimated the recycling potential of typical high-end equipment in China through an ownership coefficient method. The end-of-life quantity of railway and aviation transportation equipment between 2000 and 2050 was predicted. The results show that the recycling potential remained at a low amount since 2000, but underwent rapid growth in recent years and exceeded 28 Mt in 2020. Furthermore, the recycling potential in 2050 was estimated to hit 74 Mt, roughly three times that in 2020. The waste high-end equipment in 2050 will include at least 72 Mt of steel, 831 kt of aluminum, 179 t of neodymium, and 2.3 kt of titanium. Compared with e-waste and end-of-life vehicles, recycling also plays an important role in the long-term use of resources. Due to the lack of scientific identification and clear rule for recycling, this study aims to make a preliminary effort on recycling waste the high-end equipment by providing scientific processing data and decision references.

Global electrification of mobility and energy storage is driving an unprecedented demand for lithium‐ion batteries (LIBs) for which graphite is one of the major components. Multiple prior studies have attempted to assess the environmental footprint of LIBs by way of life cycle analysis (LCA), and the poor quality of inventory data on the production of graphite (at various purities) has been highlighted consistently. This work reviews the available inventories used in the assessment of natural and synthetic battery‐grade graphite production, and demonstrates that some upstream, downstream, and peripheral processes—including important processes associated with mining, calcination, and other steps—are often omitted, leading to greatly underestimated impacts. It proposes a new rigid framework for comparing different graphite production routes and a corresponding indicative inventory for synthetic graphite production. This inventory is used to estimate the global warming potential and energy demand of synthetic graphite, yielding results of 13.8 kgCO 2 ‐eq/kg and 45.9 MJ/kg, respectively, suggesting that prior literature may have underestimated these results by a factor of two or more. The work concludes by highlighting the need to evaluate a broader suite of applicable impact categories and to fully account for the full suite of by‐and co‐products in future LCAs.

The transition to a low-carbon economy will be material-intensive. Production of these materials (from mining to manufacturing) incurs environmental costs that vary widely, depending on the geology, mineralogy, extraction routes, type of product, purity of product, background system or manufacturing infrastructure. Understanding the impacts of the raw materials underpinning the low-carbon economy is essential for eliminating any dissonance between the benefits of renewable technologies and the impacts associated with the production of the raw materials. In this Review, we propose an integrated life cycle assessment and geometallurgical approach to optimize the technical performance and reduce the environmental impact of raw material extraction. Life cycle assessments are an effective way of understanding the system-wide impacts associated with material production, from ore in the ground to a refined chemical product ready to be used in advanced technologies such as batteries. In the geometallurgy approach, geologists select exploration targets with resource characteristics that lend themselves to lower environmental impacts, often considering factors throughout the exploration and development process. Combining these two approaches allows for more accurate and dynamic optimization of technology materials resource efficiency, based on in situ ore properties and process simulations. By applying these approaches at the development phase of projects, a future low-carbon economy can be achieved that is built from ingredients with a lower environmental impact. The transition to renewable energy will require a notable quantity of technology metals and materials; however, production of technology materials causes substantial environmental damage. This Review discusses the raw material extraction approaches that optimize technical performance and reduce environmental impact.

The responsible sourcing agenda is becoming increasingly important in minerals supply. In order to provide the rare earths needed to decarbonize economies, mines will need to show that they are minimizing their environmental impacts. Even at the earliest stages of new mining projects such as the exploration phase, responsible sourcing principles can be implemented by choosing deposits with desirable characteristics from the wide range of potential sources of REE that are available. However, there is no such thing as the "perfect REE deposit." Applying life cycle assessment (LCA) during the exploration process to predict environmental impacts, so these can be mitigated most efficiently during mine design, is a powerful tool to aid responsible sourcing. This approach matches well to the LCA techniques that are under development to aid responsible sourcing of rare earths by working mines and refineries. The LCA technique is most effective at measuring environmental sustainability. Governance and social aspects also need to be considered as key parts of responsible sourcing.

The aim of this study is to investigate whether eliminating plastics entirely under existing waste infrastructure and management practices could have an adverse effect on climate change, using a case study on the hypothetical substitution of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) with glass as the material for bottling liquids in the domestic sector in Cornwall, England. A life cycle environmental impacts-based model was created using high resolution local data on household waste and current management practices in combination with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) datasets. The model allows users to define key system parameters such as masses of materials, transport options and end-of-life processes and produces results for 11 environmental impact categories including the Global Warming Potential (GWP). The results from the application of this model on the case study of Cornwall have shown that the substitution of PET with glass as the material for bottling under the current waste infrastructure and management practices could lead to significant increases in GWP and hinder efforts to tackle climate change. A sensitivity analysis of the glass/PET mass ratio suggests that in order to achieve equal GWP the glass bottles need to become approximately 38% of the weight they are now. Increasing the recycled content and decreasing losses during the recycling processes could also help lower the GWP by 18.9% and 14.5%, respectively. This model can be expanded further to include more types of plastics and other regions to evaluate designs of new regional circular economy with less plastics waste and pollution. Our study suggests that it is necessary and crucial to consider the specific waste infrastructure and management practices in place and use science-based models that incorporate life cycle thinking to evaluate any solutions to plastics pollution in order to avoid problem shifting.

The aim of this study is to investigate the life cycle environmental impacts resulting from the potential substitution of Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) bottles with glass ones in Cornwall County and examine whether eliminating them under the current practices could have an adverse effect on climate change. Based on data provided by the local authorities and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) models a tool was created that utilises data for residential waste collection and current management practices. The tool allows the users to define their desirable masses, transport options and handling processes for this waste and provides results for 11 environmental impact categories including the Global Warming Potential (GWP). The results from the application of this tool on the case study of Cornwall County have shown that the substitution of PET bottles with glass ones under the current management practices could lead to significant increases in the GWP and hinder efforts to tackle climate change. Preliminary results from a more comprehensive LCA however, show that when including the production and recycling, and under favourable circumstances a close in the GWP gap should not be excluded. This tool can be expanded further to include more types of plastic waste data from the rest of the administrative divisions of South England and contribute to the design of a new regional paradigm of circular economy with less plastics waste. In order to do that though, it is necessary to identify and address the specific needs of the region and use science-based tools that incorporate life cycle thinking to avoid burden shifting.

The study shows that a detailed LCA can be carried out for a proposed mining project as soon as Prefeasibility (PFS) data are available. The prefeasibility study is one of the key early steps in bringing a deposit towards production and results are often publically available. This study applies the technique to a rare earth deposit because rare earth element (REE) consumption is increasing owing to their use in low-carbon technologies such as electric vehicles and wind turbines. It is therefore particularly important to understand the environmental impacts of the raw materials. A number of REE deposits are under development to give additional supply and many possess novel mineral compositions and will require different processing methods than previously used. Assessing the environmental performance of the production of REE during the development of projects offers significant insights into how to improve the sustainability of a project. In this study we used life cycle assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental impacts for producing rare earth oxide (REO) from the Bear Lodge Project, United States. The Life Cycle Impact Assessment results were produced for each year over the life of the project, generating insight about the relationships between ore composition, grade, processing method and environmental impacts. The environmental impacts vary significantly during the life of a project and a temporally explicit LCA can highlight these.

Rare earth elements (REE), including neodymium, praseodymium, and dysprosium are used in a range of low-carbon technologies, such as electric vehicles and wind turbines, and demand for these REE is forecast to grow. This study demonstrates that a process simulation-based life cycle assessment (LCA) carried out at the early stages of a REE project, such as at the pre-feasibility stage, can inform subsequent decision making during the development of the project and help reduce its environmental impacts. As new REE supply chains are established and new mines are opened. It is important that the environmental consequences of different production options are examined in a life cycle context in order that the environment footprint of these raw materials is kept as low as possible. Here, we present a cradle-to-gate and process simulation-based life cycle assessment (LCA) for a potential new supply of REE at Songwe Hill in Malawi. We examine different project options including energy selection and a comparison of on-site acid regeneration versus virgin acid consumption which were being considered for the project. The LCA results show that the global warming potential of producing 1 kg of rare earth oxide (REO) from Songwe Hill is between 17 and 87 kg CO2-eq. A scenario that combines on-site acid regeneration with off-peak hydroelectric and photovoltaic energy gives the lowest global warming potential and performs well in other impact categories. This approach can equally well be applied to all other types of ore deposits and should be considered as a routine addition to all pre-feasibility studies.

Life cycle assessments (LCA) are useful to quantify the environmental costs of mining projects, however the application of LCA is often a retrospective environmental measurement of operating mines. This paper presents a novel methodology of carrying out a LCA to generate life cycle impact assessment data that can form an environmental block model of a deposit. These spatially explicit data can then be used as a constraint within long-term mine scheduling simulations. The results indicate that significant reductions in global warming impact can be achieved at a small economic cost. For example using an environmental constraint it was possible to achieve 91.9% of the global warming impact whilst achieving 95.9% of the net present value compared to the baseline. Different constraints and economic scenarios are explored and multi-criteria decision analysis is carried out. This approach enables environmental considerations to be included in strategic mine planning. This is important because mining will continue to form an important part of our society for the foreseeable future. Integrating environmental considerations into the earliest stages of mine planning can assist in driving environmentally responsible raw material extraction.

A number of studies have identified rare earth elements (REE) as critical metals due to their high economic importance combined with a high risk of supply disruption (Du and Graedel, 2011; Nassar et al., 2015; Schneider et al., 2014). The current methods used to calculate resource depletion in life cycle assessments (LCA) neglect socio-economic, regulatory and geopolitical aspects, nor do they include functionalities such as material recycling or reuse that control the supply of raw materials. These are important factors in determining criticality and are the controlling factors on REE availability rather than geological availability. The economic scarcity potential (ESP) method introduced by Schneider et al. (2014) provides a framework to calculate criticality. This paper reviews the ESP method and advances the method based on recent developments in material criticality. ESP criticality scores for 15 REE with the addition of Au, Cu, platinum-group metals (PGM), Fe and Li are measured. The results highlight that Nd and Dy are the most critical REE, owing mainly to the high demand growth forecast for these two elements. A pathway is presented for incorporating these calculated scores into the ReCiPe life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method of a LCA.

"Incorporating criticality into life cycle assessment for rare earth production." Applied Earth Science, 126(2), pp. 83–84

In this letter, we respond to the article in this journal by Weng et al. (2016) which performs a cradle to gate scale life cycle impact assessment for 26 operating and potential rare earth element (REE) mining projects. The work focuses on gross energy requirement and the global warming impacts of the primary REE production stage. The results suggest that the declining ore grades of REE significantly increase the environmental impact of REE production. We agree that a life cycle impact approach can be useful in comparing proposed REE production routes in the various different deposits currently under exploration, and were pleased to see a range of deposit types included in this work. However, we would like to make five points to clarify some of the results, which if taken at 'face value' from the graphs presented by Weng et al. (2016) may be misleading. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Most critical raw materials, such as the rare-earth elements (REEs), are starting products in long manufacturing supply chains. Unlike most consumers, geoscientists can become involved in responsible sourcing, including best environmental and social practices, because geology is related to environmental impact factors such as energy requirements, resource efficiency, radioactivity and the amount of rock mined. The energy and material inputs and the emissions and waste from mining and processing can be quantified, and studies for REEs show little difference between 'hard rocks', such as carbonatites, and easily leachable ion-adsorption clays. The reason is the similarity in the embodied energy in the chemicals used for leaching, dissolution and separation.