Environmental, social, and economic implications of critical raw materials’ extraction from residues

This chapter provides an overview of economic, environmental, and social implications of critical raw materials (CRMs) extraction from mining, mineral processing, and metallurgical residues. Moreover, it describes the different methodologies [material flow analysis, life cycle assessment (LCA), life cycle costing, social LCA], which could be implemented to support decision-making, case by case, in the prefeasibility phase (at a low TRL level) of mining residue reprocessing, within an eco-design approach. Therefore by describing these methodologies, as applied in various case studies, this chapter highlights the importance of adopting a multidisciplinary approach and the relative skills, to measure the impacts in the three spheres of sustainability: the environmental, economic, and social ones. The aim of this chapter is in fact to contribute to the demonstration that the recovery of secondary materials from mining, mineral processing, and metallurgical residues can be sustainable in both economic and environmental terms, by describing tools that enable to assess of how economically viable and environmentally sustainable these processes are. Thus this chapter helps to prove that the latter represents a concrete opportunity for circular economy and sustainable development and, at the same time, a possibility of sourcing CRMs from deposits within the European Union.