Abstract
A historical overview shows that mankind has feared the scarcity of mineral resources, especially metals, for many centuries. In the first half of the 20th century, this discussion was marked by the great military demand for raw materials, followed by the growing world population, increasing consumption and environmental awareness. From then on, there was less talk of regional shortages, but more discussion of a global scarcity or even a drying up of raw material sources worldwide. Although these forecasts are still controversially discussed today, the assessment of resource depletion has become an integral element of Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) or Life Cycle Impact Assessments (LCIA) of product systems. A number of methodological approaches are available for this purpose, which are presented and applied in a series of articles as part of a special issue of “Resources”. The fundamental question is also addressed, namely to what extent the assessment of resource depletion in the context of an environmental study such as LCA is appropriate.
Highlights
In October 2015, a workshop entitled ”Mineral Resources in Life Cycle Impact Assessments (LCIA): Mapping the path forward”took place in London
Two things make it so difficult to supply the industrial society with mineral raw materials and with metals in particular—they are limited on earth, and their extraction is associated with great effort
The pure quantities (m3 of water or km2 of area) are not sufficient to describe the environmental quality of the resource input, yet this is needed in the following step of an Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), the Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA), where the ecological relevance of the energy and material flows is quantified
Summary
In October 2015, a workshop entitled ”Mineral Resources in LCIA: Mapping the path forward”. A fruitful discussion arose and the idea came up to record some of the thoughts These records lead to a special issue of the magazine “Resources”, which was published online in 2016. The topic of scarcity and supply reliability has been discussed for a very long time, again and again, which proves a look into history. In this introduction, are the contributions of the special edition briefly presented, but a reference to the long history of the discussion is made, and some rare sources are quoted by way of example
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