AESA approach applied to mineral and metal resources use sustainability in the building sector: The MiMOSA method

Abstract

Considering the increase of natural resource use, humanity is facing the problem of resource depletion. The building sector is a major consumer of resources. The most consumed resources are mineral and metal resources. Thereby, the identification, and then optimisation, of mineral and metal resource use in the building sector appears as a necessity. One tool to quantify the use of those resources is LCA. Currently, several authors develop absolute environmental sustainability assessment (AESA) methods, combined with LCA, to compare the pressures of the studied project with the global carrying capacity of the planet. However, most of the AESA approaches do not actually include normalization factors about the use of resources, and in particular mineral and metal resources. Besides, the mainly used LCIA characterization methods of mineral and metal resources present several limits when applied to Circular Economy projects within the building sector. Thereby, the goal of this research project is to answer the following question: Can the consumption of mineral and metal resources for a given building project be considered sustainable? To answer this question, a methodology was developed. This methodology is inspired by the AESA approach by proposing a sustainable resource budget for each mineral or metal substance and will combine the MFA methods to the LCA method to calculate sustainability indicators for each mineral and metal resource. The Mineral and Metal absOlute Sustainability Assessment (MiMOSA) method integrates the circular economy actions and considers an appropriate spatial scale for each resource and will be presented in this paper.