Including Resource Security of Supply in LCA: a proposal

The security of supply of mineral raw materials has become a high-priority theme in the political agenda of many countries, especially those highly dependent on imports. At EU level, resource security is claimed as a policy objective both in the Raw Materials Initiative (EC European Commission 2008) and within the resource efficiency policy (EC European Commission 2011a; EC European Commission 2011b). “Criticality” has also emerged as a research subject and different methodologies for assessing critical raw materials have been developed. Most of them are based on supply risk and vulnerability of a system to a potential supply disruption (Erdmann and Graedel 2011). Security of supply is also one of the conditions for ensuring a sustainable supply of raw materials. It is debated if environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) (ISO 14044 2006) should take into account resource security, as well as other socio-economic issues related to resources or if these aspects should be included in a social LCA (Klinglmair et al. 2013; Mancini et al. 2013; Mancini et al., in press).