Activities for the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of raw materials

In Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) studies related to the building sector, analysts encounter a difficulty in finding primary data for raw material extraction processes. This gap is nowadays overcome by the adoption of secondary data, mainly through the use of generic database processes. Moreover, studies related to minerals used in the ceramic sector, as well as LCA assessments of national mining sites, are not available.

These critical issues were addressed and overcome within the REDiRECT project, thanks to capillary site-specific data collection, paying attention not only to extractive processes in a narrow sense, but also assessing the starting and post-restoration landscape conditions in terms of biodiversity loss and impact on the CO2 cycle.

The real methodological innovation introduced in this study concerned the definition of environmental indicators for LCA calculation methods capable of assessing the depletion of extracted resources under dynamic conditions.

The results obtained allow to bridge the aforementioned gap also with a view to analysing the impacts on the entire block chain, in order to identify and implement targeted corrective actions.