Review and Outlook for Assessing the Impacts of Mineral Resource Use

Abstract

Mineral resources play a significant role in industrial growth and decarbonized society. On the other hand, their use is one of the most debatable impact categories in life cycle impact assessment and presents different challenges. This paper aims to review recent development and provide future works for assessing the impacts of mineral resource use. First, I described the problems and impact mechanisms associated with mineral resource use as a basis for the impact assessment. Then, exiting methods and models for assessing the impacts of mineral resource use were classified into six method categories and reviewed. Finally, I provided several future works mainly for developing the methods of assessing the impacts of mineral resource use.