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(W/MC264) An appraisal of the resources depletion concept in Life Cycle Assessment. Abdel-Atty, Randa1, Monhemius, John1, Vesovic, Velisa1, 1 ABSTRACT- The last decade has witnessed a large change in industrial design practices with particular emphasis being placed on environmental impact. Industry is under increasing pressure to justify its environmental credentials by making use of one the methodologies to quantify the environmental impact of its process. One of the most useful tools developed, for the purpose of evaluating the environmental damage potential of a given process, is Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA). Although large advances have been made, both in the development and applications of LCA, there are areas in which further work is necessary. One such area is development of a methodology for quantifying the environmental 'attributes' of processes which will enable impact analysis to be carried out on a more scientific basis than currently possible. The present project has concentrated on examining ways in which depletion of natural resources can be expressed in terms of quantitative indices that can be related to a measure of environmental sustainability. The first step involved an examination of the current methods by making use of the latest data on reserves, production, consumption, and recycling of environmentally important non-renewable resources. Two categories of non-renewable resources, namely metals ( copper, zinc, lead, nickel, tin and mercury) and energy (crude oil) were examined. The results of this work indicate that the currently recommended LCA indices, based on reserves and production, do not adequately describe the reality of mineral extraction and thus need to be replaced by more appropriate measures. Key words: LCA, non-renewable, metals |
