Promoting life cycle thinking for sustainability in the mining sector of the Philippines

Balanay, Raquel M.; Halog, Anthony

doi:10.1007/s11367-016-1105-x

Cited by 11 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…The direction that the mining industry should head to become more sustainable coincides with the purpose of applying a life cycle approach and thinking. Although the LCA methodology does not hold the panacea to all of the sustainability issues faced by the mining industry, it offers a valuable concept that helps to put logic, traceability, and accountability on the environmental issues associated with its operations (Balanay & Halog 2017). However, despite valuable features, capabilities, and advantages, the LCA methodology suffers from some limitations, and presents LCA practitioners in the minerals industry with a number of challenges that may be the possible reasons for the lack of its widespread application in decision-making.…”

Section: Discussion On the Challenges And Benefits Of Adopting The LImentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of tailings management options: a conceptual case study in Western Australia

Carneiro¹,

Fourie²

2019

Proceedings of the International Conference on Mine Closure

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The vast amount of waste produced by the mining industry, of which a large proportion is tailings, has the potential to cause numerous environmental problems, and represents a possible barrier to sustainability. Although the choice of a strategy for tailings management has historically been dictated primarily by technical and economic factors, the sustainability of the selected tailings disposal method is becoming increasingly important in decision-making. Life cycle assessment (LCA) has been widely adopted as an environmental systems analysis tool and can be used for evaluating the environmental impacts of mining and mineral processing operations from a life cycle perspective. In spite of its appeal, however, the application of LCA in the mining industry, especially in tailings management is still a work in progress. Aimed at addressing this research gap, this paper reports on the results of a cradle-to-grave LCA study carried out to investigate the environmental profile of two different tailings management options. A conceptual case study for the disposal of gold tailings in Western Australia as a slurry, or as filtered tailings, was considered. The environmental impacts of each option were assessed, environmental hotspots were identified, and cleaner production measures were suggested to improve the overall environmental performance of tailings operations in Australia. In the context of mine waste management, this paper ends with a discussion addressing the benefits and challenges of applying LCA as an environmental decision-support tool, providing more information to the decision-making process and facilitating better communication with stakeholders.

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Section: Discussion On the Challenges And Benefits Of Adopting The LImentioning

confidence: 99%

Life cycle assessment of tailings management options: a conceptual case study in Western Australia

Carneiro¹,

Fourie²

2019

Proceedings of the International Conference on Mine Closure

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“…Next to social standards also compliance with environmental standards is gaining in importance for consumers (Balanay and Halog, 2016;Evgeny et al, 2016;Kirchner, 2012). Contrary to global impacts like climate change consumers expect that local impacts like eutrophication and eco toxicity are prevented by using proper technology.…”

Section: Societal Acceptancementioning

confidence: 99%

Integrated method to assess resource efficiency – ESSENZ

Bach

Berger

Henßler

et al. 2016

Journal of Cleaner Production

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With increasing demand of abiotic resources also the pollution of natural resources like water and soil has risen in the last decades due to global industrial and technological development. Thus, enhancing resource efficiency is a key goal of national and international strategies. For a comprehensive assessment of all related impacts of resource extraction and use all three sustainability dimensions have to be taken into account: economic, environmental and social aspects. Furthermore, to avoid burden shifting life cycle based methods should be applied. As companies need operational tools and approaches, a comprehensive method has been developed to measure resource efficiency of products, processes and services in the context of sustainable development (ESSENZ). Overall 21 categories are established to measure impacts on the environment, physical and socio-economic availability of the used resources as well as their societal acceptance. For the categories socio-economic availability and societal acceptance new approaches are developed and characterization factors are provided for a portfolio of 36 metals and four fossil raw materials. The introduced approach has been tested on several case studies, demonstrating that it enhances the applicability of resource efficiency to assess product systems significantly by providing an overall framework that can be adopted across sectors, using indicators and methods which are applicable and can be integrated into existing life cycle assessment based schemes.

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“…Consumers are more and more interested in compliance with social as well as environmental standards (e.g. Tsurukawa and Manhart, 2011;The Guardian, 2015;Eisenhammer, 2015;Osburg et al, 2016;Aitken et al, 2016;Balanay and Halog, 2016;Wan Ahmad et al, 2016;Kemp et al, 2016) and expect companies as well as the government to uphold certain norms. Is the breach too severe, certain material cannot be imported for utilization because of possible consumer boycott.…”

Section: Dimension: Societal Acceptancementioning

confidence: 99%

Enhancing the assessment of critical resource use at the country level with the SCARCE method – Case study of Germany

et al. 2017

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The demand for many resources has increased significantly over the last decades due to their growing importance for industrial and technological development. Thus, various methods were developed to assess availability constraints of resources in relation to their vulnerability within countries and/or sectors (criticality). However, these methods display several shortcomings. Thus, the aim of the introduced approach is, to enhance the assessment of critical resource use on country level with the SCARCE method, by considering the two dimensions criticality (with the sub dimensions availability and vulnerability) and societal acceptance (with the sub dimensions compliance with social standards and compliance with environmental standards). For five of the 12 introduced categories measuring availability constraints the country specific import mix is used to determine availability constraints of resources individually for the country under consideration. These results can further be compared with global constraints (which are calculated based on global production data) to determine if the country under consideration performs worse or better than the global average. To measure social aspects the categories small scale mining, geopolitical risk and human rights abuse are introduced. Environmental aspects are considered within the categories sensitivity of the local biodiversity, climate change and water scarcity. Additionally, next to metals also fossil fuels are included allowing a direct comparison of both abiotic resources. The SCARCE method is applied for the case study of Germany for which criticality results are presented and their plausibility is validated. It is shown that for Germany tungsten is the raw material showing high risks in all considered dimensions excluding the sub dimension vulnerability. Its high availability constraints are defined by the categories political stability, primary material use and price fluctuations. Further, due to the countries tungsten is imported from (e.g. Bolivia), its compliance with social and environmental standards is low. To enhance the applicability of the SCARCE method, indicator results are provided for 40 resources to assess their availability constraints as well as their compliance with social and environmental standards.

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Promoting life cycle thinking for sustainability in the mining sector of the Philippines

Cited by 11 publications

References 30 publications

Life cycle assessment of tailings management options: a conceptual case study in Western Australia

Life cycle assessment of tailings management options: a conceptual case study in Western Australia

Integrated method to assess resource efficiency – ESSENZ

Enhancing the assessment of critical resource use at the country level with the SCARCE method – Case study of Germany

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