USE OF LCA IN THE MINING INDUSTRY AND RESEARCH CHALLENGES

Pascal Lesagel,2, Catherine Reid1, Manuele Margni1,

Michel Aubertin3, Louise Deschnes1
1
CIRAIG, cole Polytechnique de Montral, Qubec
2
Sylvatica, Qubec
3
Industrial NSERC Polytechnique-UQAT Chair, Environment and Mine Wastes Management cole Polytechnique de Montral, Qubec

ABSTRACT
Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a holistic environmental assessment tool that allows the
compilation and evaluation of the inputs, outputs, and potential environmental impacts of a
product or service throughout its life cycle, from cradle to grave (i.e., from resource extraction
and transformation to final disposal, including production and use stages). The relevance of
LCA for the mining industry is twofold. First, the mining industry has a role in providing the
LCA community the data that allows subsequent evaluations of the life cycle environmental
impacts of primary materials such as metals, as well as the environmental comparison of the
downstream products of the mining industry with other competing materials for specific uses.
Second, the mining industry can use LCA in order to evaluate the environmental impacts of its
activities, identify their environmental hotspots and compare the impacts of available technical
options. For example, the environmental impacts of different extractive and processing
technology can be compared through the use of LCA. This latter use of LCA by the mining
industry is less common. This paper discusses the use of LCA to compare sulphidic tailings
management options. The paper also presents some of the LCA research challenges that still
have to be addressed to increase the relevance of LCA results for the specific context of mining
activities.

RSUM
Lanalyse du cycle de vie (ACV) est un outil danalyse environnemental holistique qui
permet la compilation et lvaluation des intrants, extrants et impacts environnementaux
potentiels dun produit ou service durant tout sont cycle de vie, du berceau au tombeau
(cest--dire de lextraction et transformation premire des ressources jusqu llimination
en fin de vie, incluant les tapes de production et dutilisation). La pertinence de lACV pour
lindustrie minire se prsente sous deux aspects. Premirement, lindustrie minire a un rle
dans le dveloppement de donnes dinventaires qui permettront la communaut ACV
dvaluer, pour des usages particuliers, les impacts environnementaux des matriaux
primaires tels les mtaux et aussi leurs comparaison avec des matriaux qui leurs font
comptition. Deuximement, lindustrie minire peut directement utiliser lACV pour
valuer les impacts environnementaux de ses propres activits, identifier ses points
chauds et valuer les impacts de diffrentes technologies disponibles. Par exemple, les
impacts environnementaux de diffrentes technologies employes dans lextraction et la
transformation de minraux peuvent tre compars. Cette deuxime utilisation de lACV par
lindustrie minire nest pas trs frquente. Ce papier prsente une telle utilisation de lACV
pour comparer des options de gestion de rejets miniers. Le papier prsente aussi quelques
dfis qui doivent toujours tre relevs pour amliorer la pertinence des rsultats de lACV
pour le contexte des activits minires.

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INTRODUCTION
Although the early development of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology dates back to the
end of the 1960s, in the context of the environmental assessment of packaging options, it is in
the 1990s that its methodological development really took off. It was identified at the World
Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002 as one of the science-based approaches that could
help guide policy aimed at improving the products and services provided, while reducing
environmental and health impacts.
In short, LCA is an environmental assessment tool that allows the evaluation of potential
environmental impacts of a product or service throughout its life cycle, from cradle to grave.
LCA is considered comprehensive because it includes within its scope (1) all relevant technical
processes related to the function provided by the product or service and (2) a wide range of
potential environmental impacts linked to the inputs from the environment (e.g., resource
extraction) and outputs to the environment (e.g., emissions to air, water, or soil) of these
processes. This comprehensiveness helps avoid problem shifting when trying to minimize
environmental impacts of products or services. Problem shifting can occur by displacing
environmental impacts to another stage in the life cycle, to another type of environmental
problem, or to another location (Wrisberg et al., 2002). LCA is used for various applications,
especially to identify opportunities to improve the environmental profile of products (hot-spot
identification), and product comparison, but also for product development, market claims and
policy development (ISO 2006).
The LCA methodological framework as been standardized by the International Standard
Organization (see the ISO 14040 series) and consists of the following four iterative phases:
Goal and scope definition: It is in this phase that the aim of the study and the
corresponding methodological choices that will be used in subsequent phases are
unambiguously stated. Aims of LCAs can include, inter alia, the generation of life cycle
environmental information on a product to guide its redesign, the comparison of
competing products to guide green purchasing decisions, and the evaluation of the
environmental consequences of public policies such as the introduction of recycling laws.
It is also during this phase of the study that the function under study is specified and
expressed as a functional unit. This functional unit is crucial since it serves as the
basis on which alternative options are compared. It is also during this phase that the
product system is definedthat is, it is determined which processes are to be included
within the study.
Life cycle inventory (LCI): This phase of the LCA comprises two very important
activities. First, for each process included in the study, information is gathered on all
relevant inputs from nature (e.g. minerals, water), inputs from other processes (e.g.
ancillary materials), and outputs to the environment (emissions to air, water and soil),
per unit of output from the process. Data collected by the LCA community, found in LCI
databases, is an essential part of this step. Second, all these inputs and outputs are
normalized to one functional unit and summed, giving what is called the life cycle
inventory. Typically, life cycle inventories contain a few hundred individual types of
emissions and extractions summed over a few thousand locations distributed around the
globe.
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 Life cycle impact assessment: In order to render the results of the LCI phase useable,
these hundreds of flows are boiled down to a few impact indicators. Typically, LCA will
assess contribution to about 10 to 15 impact categories, including extraction of abiotic
and biotic resources, land use, climate change, stratospheric ozone depletion, photooxidant creation (smog), human toxicity, ecotoxicity, acidification, and eutrophication
(Udo de Haes et al., 2002). The results at the level of the impact categories can be
combined via an extended cause-effect chain modeling into a smaller set of damage (or
endpoint) categories, which normally comprise human health, ecosystem quality and
resources. These results can then be normalized to increase their interpretability. Often,
damages are divided by the per capita yearly contribution to damage categories of a given
region. Several sets of models allowing the translation of life cycle inventories, called
life cycle impact assessment models, have been developed by university research centers
and LCA consulting firms (Udo de Haes et al., 2002).
Interpretation: This last phase of an LCA consists in analyzing the results, drawing
conclusions, specifying the limits of the study, and providing recommendations.
This paper will explore two ways in which LCA is relevant for the mining industry. A case
study on the use of LCA to compare sulphidic tailings management options is discussed.
Finally, the paper will touch on three research challenges that the LCA community must meet
to help the life cycle impact assessment phase of LCA be more relevant for the mining
industry.
MINING AND MINERAL PROCESSING IN LCA
Mining activities are an essential part of the economy, and its outputs are found in myriad
products: electronic products, buildings, cars, etc. Since LCA is employed to evaluate the
environmental impacts of these products, it is necessary for the mining and mineral processing
industry to provide Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) data associated with its activities, i.e. data on
the inputs and outputs associated with mineral extraction and subsequent refinement. These
data also allow, for example, the comparison of the environmental impacts of competing
metals in products (e.g. steel vs. aluminum in the production of vehicles, see Das, 2000) or of
other materials competing with metals (e.g. wood vs. steel structural beams in buildings, see
Petersen and Solberg, 2002). The rapid increase in the demand for life cycle information by
consumers and manufacturers behooves the mining industry to provide up-to-date quality LCI
data in order to stay competitive.
The mining and mineral processing industry has partially been up to this challenge. Some LCI
data on base metals and coal have been available to the LCA community for many years, either
directly from industrial associations (e.g. International Iron and Steel Institute, European
Copper Institute) or through LCI databases assembled by academic, governmental or
consulting groups (see e.g. the ecoinvent, GaBi, IDEMAT and the ELCD databases). Rarer
metals such as gold, silver and platinum are now found in at least the two most widely used
databases (ecoinvent and GaBi), although the quality of the data is sometimes weak, being
based on extrapolations rather than actual measurements.
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In the most extensive databases, mining data consider the following activities: energy use
during mining operations, in the form of electricity, diesel, etc.; blasting; the production of the
necessary mining infrastructure (e.g. conveyor belts, machinery and buildings); the use of
chemicals used in extractive processes; and, albeit in a partial manner, waste treatment. It also
considers inputs from the environment (e.g. the actual mineral, water) and emissions to air,
water and soil. In less advanced databases, mining infrastructure, blasting, land conversion,
chemical inputs and waste treatment are only partially included or excluded altogether. Even
in the most extensive databases, there are important aspects missing, such as exploration and
development work, ore losses, location and the mining/processing method dependent factors
that govern the nature of discharges to the environment (Durucan et al., 2006). The mining
industry therefore still has a role in providing more comprehensive data on its activities in
order to improve the quality of the results of LCA.
LCA FOR MINING ACTIVITIES
Beyond the role the mining industry has in supplying LCI data, its members can also directly use
LCA as a decision making tool to support decisions that minimize the overall environmental
impacts of their own activities. A number of international initiatives were launched in recent
years to evaluate the use of LCA in the context of minerals and metals production. Among them,
the Mining, Minerals and Sustainable Development (MMSD) project concluded that "LCA is a
useful tool to provide an assessment of environmental considerations during decision making
within the industry" (Stewart, 2001).
Such a use of LCA is much less frequent, however. A few large mining companies have used it
for project and process selection (Stewart, 2001; Stewart et al., 2004). Some published studies
have also compared the environmental impacts of various production methods (e.g., Giurco et
al., 2000; Norgate and Rankin, 2000; Tan and Khoo, 2005). Other initiatives were also launched
to evaluate the use of LCA in the context of minerals and metals production, but few practical
cases have been documented so far.
Also, most published mining LCA studies show that efforts are placed on the evaluation of the
mine operation;very little emphasis has been placed on the extraction of the mineral ore and on
the consequent waste handling aspect of the industry (Van Zyl, 2002; Durucan et al., 2006). For
example, in the ecoinvent LCI datasets, one of the most comprehensive databases, the sulphidic
tailings management process considers only the occupation of land, neglecting to consider
emissions from the tailings over time and the energy and material requirements for sulphidic
tailings management.
CASE STUDY LCA OF SULPHIDIC TAILINGS MANAGEMENT OPTIONS
This section presents an example of LCA being used to compare the potential environmental
impacts of different alternatives available for a mining company. The LCA, conducted by the
CIRAIG and the Industrial NSERC Polytechnique-UQAT Chair, Environment and Mine Wastes
Management, compared the environmental impacts of different sulphidic tailings management
options (Reid, 2006; Reid et al., 2008).
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The management of sulphidic tailings aims at preventing the production of Acid Mine Drainage
(AMD), which is sometimes produced when reactive minerals, such as pyrite and pyrrhotite, are
exposed to water and oxygen. The ensuing decline of the leachate pH in tailings can lead to the
solubilisation of various toxic elements (e.g. Aubertin et al., 2002). Sulphidic tailings
management seeks to prevent AMD by limiting the availability of water or oxygen or reducing
the amount of sulphides.
The LCA studied the case of the Louvicourt mine, a closed copper-zinc underground mine
located near Val-dOr, Quebec. During the operation phase (1994-2005), 15.5M tons of ore
were extracted, producing 2.2M tons of concentrate, 13.3M tons of tailings and 25M m3 of final
effluent. The tailings have a high pyrite content and hence a strong net acid-generating potential.
About half were sent to a sub-aqueous disposal area, and the rest was used as paste backfill in
underground stopes, for which processing in a backfill plant is necessary (water removal and
addition of cement and other binders).
The potential environmental impacts of this tailing management strategy were compared to those
associated with a scenario where 100% of tailings are sent to a sub-aqueous disposal area. The
LCA also considered three alternatives mine closure options: a) submerged tailings, b) partial
desulphurization with a cover of desulphurized material and c) a cover with capillary barrier
effects (CCBE) made of natural soils followed by revegetation. The resulting six compared
options are summarized in Table 1. While this paper only gives a brief overview of the study,
more detail can be found in Reid (2006) and Reid et al. (2008).
TABLE 1. Compared sulphidic tailings management scenarios
Development
Operation
Tailings site closure options
A Tailings submerged
Construction of
Tailings disposal site (100% of
B Partial desulphurization
1 tailings
tailings submerged)
Cover with Capillary
impoundment
C
Barrier Effects (CCBE)
A* Tailings submerged
Construction of
Tailings disposal site (48% of
B Partial desulphurization
tailings
tailings submerged)
Cover with Capillary
2* impoundment
C
Barrier Effects (CCBE)
Backfill plant
Backfill plant (52% of tailings
Backfill plant dismantling
construction
processed)
* actual management option selected and performed at the mine

The goals of the study were to draw the inventory of these management scenarios from the
development to the post-closure phase, to assess and compare their environmental impacts and to
determine the importance of the land-use impact category. The functional unit (FU) was defined
as the management of the total production (1994-2005) of tailings from processing copper and
zinc ore at the Louvicourt mine, for the extraction of 15 500 000 tons of mineral ore. The actual
mining and processing of minerals was excluded from the study, which focused only on the
management of tailings.
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The product system was first divided in accordance with the mine life cycle phases:
Development (D), Operation (O), and Closure (C). Each life cycle stage is composed of several
processes, including material production and transportation, equipment/machinery transportation
and operation, and electricity and diesel consumption. For the tailings disposal site, D includes
dyke construction, and O includes lime treatment (because of thiosalts produced at the mill). The
neutralized water overflow was sent by gravity to the polishing pond which was also used as a
retention pond. For the backfill, D includes the construction of the backfill plant production, and
O includes the operation of the plant, including water removal and slag/cement addition.
The closure phase began at the end of mining operations and, in the results presented here, ends
two years after mine closure. Option "A" keeps tailings submerged in order to limit the amount
of oxygen in contact with the sulphidic minerals (e.g., Aubertin et al., 2002). Option "B"
consists of desulphurizing enough tailings to maintain a 1 meter deep desulphurized cover on the
tailing site (Bois et al., 2005). An elevated water table is also applied; the water level is lowered
to the Air Entry Value (AEV) of the material (about 1 m) to maintain tailings saturation
(Ouangrawa et al., 2006; Demers et al. 2008). The surface of the site is then stabilized with a 0.3
m cover of granular soil. In option "C", following the water level lowering (as in B), the
tailings disposal site is reclaimed using a capillary barrier effects (CCBE) made of 3 layers of
geological materials: a supporting layer made of waste rock, a low permeability layer made of
silt, and a protection layer of sand and gravel. The quantity of oxygen reaching the tailings is
limited by keeping the mid-layer saturated with water (Aubertin et al., 2002). Final
rehabilitation takes place by adding a layer of organic soil and seeding, in order to limit erosion.
The Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) modelling was performed with the SimaPro 6.0 software from
Pr Consultants. For each of the six scenarios, the materials, energy and equipment were
defined. Site specific data were collected for the year 2002, which is defined as representing the
average operating conditions of the mine. The data, gathered with questionnaires, site visits,
articles and interviews, mainly include the amount of energy and materials used and their
transportation. Data for the development and closure phases were obtained from consultant
interviews and reports, and from mine experts. The ecoinvent database (Frischknecht et al.,
2005) was used as a source of secondary data to complete the LCI. The assumptions made
during the elaboration of this LCI are presented by Reid (2006).
The potential impacts for each scenario were evaluated using the IMPACT 2002+ methodology
(Jolliet et al., 2003). This method is composed of fourteen impact categories : human toxicity
(carcinogen and non-carcinogen effects), respiratory effects caused by inorganics, ionizing
radiation, ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidation, aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial
ecotoxicity, aquatic acidification, aquatic eutrophication, terrestrial acidification and nitrification,
land occupation, global warming, non-renewable energy and mineral extraction. With the
exception of aquatic acidification and aquatic eutrophication, these impact categories can then be
combined in four damage categories: human health (HH), ecosystem quality (EQ), climate
change (CC) and resources use (R). The results presented below are at the level of these four
damage categories. Results at the level of the life cycle inventory (e.g. level of emissions and
extractions) and individual impact categories can be found in the two aforementioned references.

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Figure 1 compares the potential environmental impacts of the six scenarios for the four damage
categories. The shading within each bar also indicates the contribution of the different life cycle
stages (development, operation and site closure). Overall damages for the three life cycle stages
(total bar height) show, for all damage categories, that sending all tailings to a sub-aqueous
disposal area (Scenarios 1) is environmentally preferable than processing a fraction of the
tailings for use as a paste backfill (Scenarios 2), although the magnitude of this preference is
not the same for all damage categories.
It can be observed that this general tendency is due to higher Operation impacts, for all
Scenarios. In general, it is the operation phase that dominates impacts, and Scenarios 2
impacts for this life cycle stage are greater because the processing of tailings requires, overall,
much more material (predominantly slag and cement) and energy than simple disposal. The
impact categories that do not follow this tendency are: human toxicity associated mostly with
the outflow of water from the polishing pond; aquatic acidification associated mostly with the
tailing disposal site seepage; and finally land occupation associated mostly with the amount of
land occupied by the disposal area. This particular impact category dominates the total damages
to ecosystem quality damage category for Scenarios 1, and explains why, for this specific
damage category, the difference between Scenarios 1 and 2 are so low.
When considering only the site closure life cycle stage, it can be observed that the Scenarios 1
are consistently higher than impacts of Scenarios 2. This was to be expected since all impacts
are a function of the tailings disposal area and water effluent, which is smaller for Scenarios 2.
Comparison of closure options B and C shows that emissions are always higher for option C.
Again, this was to be expected since the difference between these options is that 3 layers are
necessary for the CCBE (C) versus 1 layer for the desulphurized cover (B), (C) hence needing
more materials and more operation of off-road equipment. In comparison to options B and C,
emissions for option A are much lower, as the intervention is much less intensive.

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18000
16000
14000

Persyr

12000
10000
8000
6000
4000
2000
0
1a 1b 1c 2a 2b 2b
Humanhealth

1a 1b 1c 2a 2b 2c

1a 1b 1c 2a 2b 2c

Ecosystemquality

Climatechange

Development

Operation

1a 1b 1c 2a 2b 2c
Resources

Closure2years

FIGURE 1. Cumulative environmental impacts of

development, operation and a 2 year site closure phase
Bars show impacts of scenarios 1A, 1B, 1C, 2A, 2B and 2C, respectively
The unit pers*year indicates that the results were divided by the average per capita
contribution to the damage categories for a given region, in this case Western Europe.

After the 2-year closure period, the tailings disposal site will still generate potential impacts.
First, the tailings disposal site will remain in a state that prevents any return to the initial state
(hence producing long term land-use impacts). Moreover, the tailings disposal site still produces
seepage and a final effluent containing contaminants. In order to capture these impacts, the time
frame was expanded to a 100 year site closure phase.
Figure 2 show the influence of the time frame on the ecosystem quality indicator. Whereas with
a short timeframe, Scenarios 1 are clearly preferable to Scenarios 2, the contrary becomes
true after about 10 years of site closure. In other words, the more impactful activities of
backfilling can actually be seen as an investment, paying off, for this damage category, after
about 10 years. This is largely due to the land occupation impacts, which are (1) an important
contributor to the ecosystem quality damage category, (2) much higher for Scenarios 1, and (3)
are a function of time (the more time land covered, the greater the impact). Thus, the importance
of the land-use category changes to such an extent that it affects the result interpretation in
favour of backfilling and the CCBE options (C options), for which land is reclaimed. Note
that this effect is not observed for the other damage categories. Additional discussion of the
LCA results can be found in Reid (2006) and Reid et al. (2008).
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20000
scenario 1a

18000

scenario 1b

16000
scenario 1c

14000
pers * yr

scenario 2a

12000
scenario 2b

10000

scenario 2c

8000
6000
4000
2000
0
0

20

40

60

80

100

Time (years)

FIGURE 2. Cumulative normalized ecosystem quality impacts of

development, operation and site closure phase over 100 years
RESEARCH CHALLENGES
Better Integration of Temporal Aspects in LCA
As was shown in the case study, the temporal horizon for which impacts are considered can be
crucial in determining the results of a study. This aspect has been much discussed in the
literature on LCA of landfills, for which leaching of chemicals (especially metals) from waste
can occur for thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years (see Finnveden and Nielsen (1999)
for a good discussion of this specific topic). This poses a few challenges: (1) it is difficult to
model with any precision future situations (e.g. leaching rates for emissions, durability and long
term performance of engineering works such as covers and dykes, relaxation rates for land use),
let alone do this for long time frames; (2) it is uncertain whether future burdens (e.g. emissions,
land occupations) will have the same impact as present-day burdens, since the context in which
these occur may change drastically; and (3) there is a subjective decision to take about whether
potential impacts occurring in the far future should have the same value as present impacts, i.e.
should impacts be discounted. These issues bring not only technical challenges but also
interpretive challenges for the users of the results.
Improvement of the Land Use Impact Indicator
It is recognized that land use by any industrial activity leads to substantial impacts, particularly
on biodiversity and on soil quality as a supplier of life support functions. Many attempts focused
on suggesting indicators to include the effects of land use on biodiversity, life support functions
and biomass production, although the practical implementation of such sets of indicators has
seldom been checked with a consistent framework. Particularly, they failed to consistently
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address all the main impact pathways and /or include all the impacts on a damage level with the
result that so far there is no widely accepted assessment method for land use impacts (Mila i
Canals et al., 2007). Several challenges still need to be addressed by research.
i) Characterization of land use impacts. The meaning of consumption in terms of land use is still
not clear. Unlike fossil fuels, land quality may be degraded or restored, depending upon the way
it is used. Effects of land use are very much complex to identify and diversified in their nature.
They might affect the change in carbon sequestration potential and/or evapotranspiration
patterns, change in soil erosion regulation and in water regulation potential, reduction in
biodiversity, etc. Although international efforts seems to agree including biodiversity (existence
value), biotic production potential (including soil fertility and use value of biodiversity) and
ecological soil quality (including life support) (Mila i Canals et al., 2007), there is a need to
identify and define appropriate metrics for the ecosystem services that land provides into an
operational method. This also includes the selection of a reference situation needed to measure
the impacts of land use (historic natural land state or potential state after relaxation including the
dynamic nature of land evolution).
ii) Assessing the spatial variability. Contrary to other impact assessment methods, such as
Environmental Impact Assessment, LCA was developed as a space- and time-independent
environmental assessment methodology. This is correct for these impact categories that are
global in their nature, such as Global Warming, Ozone Depletion Potential, etc., but poses some
problems for regional impact categories such as land use. Environmental interventions are in fact
likely to have a wide variability based upon factors such as local soil quality, precipitation, or
other climate issues, or even socio-political factors such as management practice. Uncertainty
compared to a generic assessment scenario can be so high that the proper representation of the
impact assessment results can be in question.
Improvement of Metal Toxicity and Ecotoxicity Characterization Factors
LCA studies by the mining industry (e.g. Seppl et al., 2002; Giurco et al., 2000) have shown
that, even if results are often useful, the characterization of the ecotoxicity impact potential for
metals found in solid waste deposits is a critical point that needs to be improved. Although this
impact category was found to be important in the context of the mining industry, its use is
controversial due to the disparity of results obtained by available models and notably the
assumption in LCA that the total amount of metals in waste deposit will mobilize (Giurco et al.,
2000). Indeed, LCA, in the perspective of assessing the potential impact, assumes that the entire
mass of emissions contributes to the environmental impact regardless of the emissions specific
bioavailability. As an example, results from a study on the LCIA assessment of mineral
processing have shown a decrease of the ecotoxicity potential impact for copper by a factor of
5.5 when using appropriate data for metal and anions mobility from solid waste residues (Giurco
et al., 2000).
In fact, in contrast with impact categories that are well recognized by the international scientific
community (eg: global warming potential, photochemical smog), there is actually no consensus
for the calculation of the ecotoxicity impact potential. The current models in LCIA need to be
improved at three levels:
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1) The fate modeling is typically adapted for organic substances, and considers parameters like
the Kow (coefficient of distribution of a substance between water and octanol, used to help
predict the behaviour of a substance in a heterogeneous medium such as soil) and the
biodegradation of the chemical. These parameters are not relevant for metals where intermedia
transfer becomes crucial, including speciation, oxidation, and fixation processes.
2) The exposure model is generally neglected for ecosystems, but for metals, it is important to
calculate the fraction of metals producing adverse effects. In this sense, the impact associated
with metal emission tends to be dominant in methods considering the total metal concentration as
bioavailable. Some LCIA methods attempt to solve the problem by estimating the soluble
fraction of metal in soil using an average value of the partition coefficient (Kd). However,
variability of the Kd coefficients with the environmental conditions is recognized (Sauv et al.,
2000). For example, data provided from over 70 studies have shown Kd values for zinc covering
a range of approximately 5 orders of magnitude. This variability was principally due to the
different pH values. From a mining waste management point of view, it is important to adjust
the exposure model to take into account the metal fraction that will be mobilized as a function of
the environmental conditions provided by the waste management practices considered.
3) The effect model may be improved by the assessment of effect factors depending on the
metals form (speciation). The use of such effect factors associated with spatially differentiated
models could enable a better assessment of the toxic impact due to metals in LCIA.
CONCLUSION
The involvement of the mining industry in LCA to achieve collective sustainable development
goals cannot be doubted. For LCA to fulfill its function as a tool to help guide decisions that
minimize the environmental impacts of products and services, the mining industry must provide
meaningful data. However, the mining industry also has an advantage in using LCA as a tool to
green its own operations, as was demonstrated by the presented case study. Three research
challenges were identified that, if met, would make LCA more adapted to the mining industrys
needs and produce more meaningful results. Work to meet these challenges is happening today,
thanks in part to the participation of the mining industrys collaboration with academia, for
example. However, these challenges should not be barriers to the use of LCA, as it is already in
good enough shape to help provide insightful information on the potential environmental
consequences of decisions taken by players within this industry.
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