Gian Andrea Blengini

Politecnico di Torino | polito · DIATI - Department of Environment, Land and Infrastructure Engineering

The paper has two interconnected bodies. The first one deals with mineral resource indicators and their role in drawing 11 EU–Africa Strategic Corridors, in a broader context of Africa–EU partnership. The second strives to understand how such Strategic Corridors are also mineral corridors, i.e. development promotors that use mineral resources as a...

Remote areas usually do not have access to electricity from the national grid. The energy demand is often covered by diesel generators, resulting in high operating costs and significant environmental impacts. With reference to the case study of Ginostra (a village on a small island in the south of Italy), this paper analyses the environmental susta...

Quality of recycling is a concept used by many authors in the scientific literature and the EU legislator. However, a clear definition of what is intended for quality of recycling and a framework for operationalising it is lacking. Most studies, while proposing indicators reflecting quality, leave the concept of quality largely undefined. Such lack...

Textile industries are in the spotlight due to the heavy environmental impacts along their products’ life cycle and, at the same time, they are a priority sector in the new circular economy action plan of the European Commission. In this framework, the Italian company Manteco SpA has developed a value chain based on the recycling of pre- and post-c...

A more extensive use of recycled aggregate in road construction is key to meeting the ambitious targets of the EU circular economy action plan. However, scepticism among designers, contractors and road agencies remains a bottleneck. This integrated structural-environmental study demonstrates the advantages of using recycled construction and demolit...

A proper understanding of the historical societal metabolism of cobalt (Co) in the European Union (EU) is lacking, resulting in a serious weakness in identifying potential sources of secondary materials, enhancing circularity, and improving forecasting assessments. A retrospective dynamic material flow analysis was performed to assess the stocks an...

The European furniture sector is dynamic and competitive, currently facing a transition to further increase the environmental sustainability and circularity of its products. Literature on this topic is relatively abundant and authors converge in the identification of the main sustainability criteria. Nevertheless, defining which sustainability crit...

Long-term statistical data was explored, acquired, processed, and analysed in order to assess the historical domestic production and international trade of a number of cobalt-containing commodities in the EU. Different data sources were examined for data, such as the British Geological Survey (BGS), the US Geological Survey (USGS), and the Eurostat...

Although metals and minerals represent a prominent asset for sustainable development, continuous population growth and the current accelerations in energy and mobility transitions are increasing concerns regarding their accessibility for current and future generations. As recent insights have identified access rather than depletion to be the domina...

The use of cobalt has experienced a strong growth in the last decades. Due to its high economic importance and high supply risk, it has been classified as a critical raw material for the EU and other economies. Part of the EU's strategy is intended to secure its availability, through fostering its efficient use and recycling. The latter is affected...

The dimension stone sector is more and more active in developing new solutions to improve the sustainability of its supply chain, partly as a consequence of the current EU policies on Circular Economy and Raw Materials. The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a recognized scientific tool for evaluating environmental impacts of the processes. Nevertheles...

Sustainable and smart mobility and associated energy systems are key to decarbonise the EU and develop a clean, resource efficient, circular and carbon-neutral future. To achieve the 2030 and 2050 targets, technological and societal changes are needed. This transition will inevitably change the composition of the future EU fleet, with an increasing...

The assessment of the criticality of raw materials allows the identification of the likelihood of a supply disruption of a material and the vulnerability of a system (e.g. a national economy, technology, or company) to this disruption. Inconclusive outcomes of various studies suggest that criticality assessments would benefit from the identificatio...

Currently, in the European Union (EU), e-waste chain performance is assessed by technical indicators that aim to ensure system compliance with collection and recovery targets set by the WEEE Directive. This study proposes indicators to improve WEEE flow monitoring beyond the current overall weight-based approach, including complementary flows and t...

Purpose Access, affordability and sustainability of raw material supply chains are crucial to the sustainable development of the European Union (EU) for both society and economy. The study investigates whether and how the social life cycle assessment (S-LCA) methodology can support responsible sourcing of raw materials in Europe. The potential of s...

In the current context of the European Environmental legislation and standards, the automotive sector is expected to continuously improve the vehicles life cycle with solutions able to minimise emissions of greenhouse gases and other negative effects on the environment and on human health. The vehicle painting process has been identified to be resp...

The assessment of the criticality of raw materials allows the identification of the likelihood of a supply disruption of a material and the vulnerability of a system (e.g. a national economy, technology, or company) to this disruption. Inconclusive outcomes of various studies suggest that criticality assessments would benefit from the identificatio...

Presentation about the results of the dynamic material flow analysis of Co for the EU using the model MaTrace

Cobalt is a Critical Raw Material for the EU and other developed economies To deeply understand its societal metabolism, robust data and information are needed. Despite the efforts to build reliable data, there is still lack of data harmonization, lack of connection between datasets, and significant data unavailability. Together with data gaps fill...

Circular Economy (CE) is a growing topic, especially in the European Union, that promotes the responsible and cyclical use of resources possibly contributing to sustainable development. CE is an umbrella concept incorporating different meanings. Despite the unclear concept, CE is turned into defined action plans supported by specific indicators. To...

Although not yet developed in Europe, second-use of traction batteries enables an extension of their lifetime and potentially improves life cycle environmental performance. Li-ion batteries (LIBs) offer the most promising chemistry for traction batteries in electric vehicles (xEVs) and for second-use. Due to the novelty of the topic and the expecte...

Although the amount of waste photovoltaic (PV)panels is expected to grow exponentially in the next decades, little research on the resource efficiency of their recycling has been conducted so far. The article analyses the performance of different processes for the recycling of crystalline silicon PV waste, in a life cycle perspective. The life cycl...

Italy is among the major producers of dimension stones and a world leader in terms of technologies for stone quarrying, cutting and finishing. In the current context of European Environmental and Raw Material policies, the stone sector is expected to enhance its overall sustainability and circularity. Previous studies have used Life Cycle Assessmen...

This work assesses the environmental impacts of an industrial-scale Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) plant fed by sewage biogas locally available from a Waste Water Treatment Plant (WWTP). Three alternative scenarios for biogas exploitation have been investigated and real data from an existing integrated SOFC-WWTP have been retrieved: the first one (Sc...

In the current EU Environmental and Raw Materials policies, raw materials play a key role in the transition from a linear to a circular economy, where a Life Cycle (LC) approach can help improve the overall sustainability. Within the dimension stone sector, some environmental studies have been developed through the standardised Life Cycle Assessmen...

Supporting Information S1: This supporting information provides details of all assumptions, primary and secondary data sources, and various calculation factors referred to in the article.

Supplementary Data S2: This supporting information provides details of all data referred to in the article, along with a complete system description. Color coding in this SI file is as follows: green = data as used in figures; yellow = final circular economy system description; blue = calculation steps; red = raw data files as downloaded.

The supply chains of raw materials and semi-finished products can create both positive and negative impacts affecting various stakeholders. Internationally, many of the Sustainable Development Goals (UN General Assembly, 2015) address, directly or indirectly, the social dimension of sustainable development and, hence, are linked to the supply of ra...

Recycling as a source of secondary raw materials contributes to the security of supply and helps advance materials circularity in the EU economy. Relevant and reliable recycling data and indicators are therefore vital to a number of EU policies related to raw materials, waste management, and circular economy, in order to better understand the prese...

This report has been produced under the Action Plan on Circular Economy in which the Commission set out to issue a report on critical raw materials and the circular economy in 2017, in order to ensure a coherent and effective approach, provide key data sources, promote best practices and identify possible further actions. The report should be seen...

The Raw Materials Scoreboard is an initiative of the EIP on raw materials. It presents relevant and reliable monitoring information that informs government, industry, and other stakeholders in line with the overarching objectives of this EIP. The Scoreboard is published every two years, with the 2018 Scoreboard being the second edition of the serie...

The concept of a circular economy (CE) is gaining increasing attention from policy makers, industry, and academia. There is a rapidly evolving debate on definitions, limitations, the contribution to a wider sustainability agenda, and a need for indicators to assess the effectiveness of circular economy measures at larger scales. Herein, we present...

Here yo can final the Final Technical Report os the project to EU Brazil Sectorla Dialogies about Critical and Stretegic Raw Materials having as case study braziian niobium. The project team was composed by brazilian and euroepan researchers.The report is available at: http://www.sectordialogues.org/documentos/proyectos/adjuntos/0c2724_Final%20Tecn...

Supplementary data and information for Figs. 5 and 7 are provided in the appendix.

Europe relies on reliable and robust knowledge on materials stocks and flows to promote innovation along the entire value chain of raw materials. The concept of the circular economy, recently adopted by the European Commission, aims at maintaining the value of products, materials, and resources in the economy for as long as possible, and minimize w...

This report is a background document used by several European Commission services to prepare the EC report on critical raw materials and the circular economy, a commitment of the European Commission made in its Communication 'EU action plan for the Circular Economy'. It represents a JRC contribution to the Raw Material Initiative and to the EU Circ...

The European Commission's (EC) Raw Materials Initiative (RMI) emphasises that raw materials are essential for the sound and sustainable functioning of Europe’s industries and, in a broader context, of Europe’s economy and society. The EC is committed to promote the competitiveness of industries related to raw materials. These industries play an imp...

The characterization of elemental cycles has a rich history in biogeochemistry. Well known examples include the global carbon cycle, or the cycles of the 'grand nutrients' nitrogen, phosphorus, and sulfur. More recently, efforts have increased to better understand the natural cycling of technology critical elements (TCEs), i.e. elements with a high...

Raw materials form the basis of Europe's economy to ensure jobs and competitiveness, and they are essential for maintaining and improving quality of life. Although all raw materials are important, some of them are of more concern than others, thus the list of critical raw materials (CRMs) for the EU, and the underlying European Commission (EC) crit...

The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of biogas-fed Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) integrated with a CO2 recovery system is presented in this work. The goal of the work is to evaluate the environmental performance of an SOFC fueled with sewage biogas and to compare it with traditional technologies (internal combustion engines and microturbines) using the s...

Sustainability and integration are becoming keywords in many European Union policies, including ones that are directly or indirectly related to mineral resources and waste management. Moreover, life cycle thinking (LCT) is core to many of these policies. The European Commission has issued the Communications “A resource efficient Europe” and “Roadma...

Policy makers set out a range of initiatives with the buzzwords ‘natural resources’, ‘raw materials’, ‘resource efficiency’, and ‘sustainable management’ of natural resources and raw materials. An analysis of the practice highlights that there are quite different interpretations of the terminology used. In this contribution, we bring proposals for...

This paper brings a discussion on the current state-of-the-art in criticality assessment in an international context. It analyzes the status of resource criticality concepts and their calculation methods. The current practice often exhibits a common two-axis assessment framework but the way the two axes are further operationalized shows heterogeneo...

This paper focuses on Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of different types of road paving technologies based on the use of bituminous mixtures containing recycled materials such as crumb rubber from end-of-life tires and reclaimed asphalt pavement. Analyses were carried out by considering different scenarios which stem from the combination of production,...

The Italian traditional sector of dimension stones (mostly marbles and granites) has begun to recognize the importance of improving its sustainability. Nevertheless, a lot of different variables, sometimes in conflict, influence the production system from the economical, environmental and social point of view. As a consequence, a global and holisti...

The need to improve the sustainability of dimension stone products has generated considerable research interest. This ongoing PhD research examines the environmental impact of stone with a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, analyzing all the processes from the extraction of the rock to the finished product (from-cradle-to-gate analysis). The pro...

La filiera della pietra ornamentale è un settore tradizionale dell'economia italiana, le cui tecniche produttive sono sostanzialmente rimaste invariate negli ultimi decenni. Recentemente, tuttavia, sta crescendo la consapevolezza che il contenimento degli impatti sia condizione sempre più necessaria per confermare la pietra ornamentale come risorsa...

Lifecycle impacts of photovoltaic (PV) plants have been largely explored in several studies. However, the end-of-life phase has been generally excluded or neglected from these analyses, mainly because of the low amount of panels that reached the disposal yet and the lack of data about their end of life. It is expected that the disposal of PV panels...

The raw materials scoreboard is an initiative of the European Innovation Partnership (EIP) on Raw Materials. Its purpose is to provide quantitative data on the EIP’s general objectives and on the raw materials policy context. It presents relevant and reliable information that can be used in policymaking in a variety of areas. The scoreboard will fo...

Purpose The European Commission’s Integrated Product Policy Communication, 2003, defined Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as the ‘best framework for assessing the potential environmental impacts of products’. Since then, the use of LCA and life cycle approaches has been developing in a wide range of European policies, and its use has also significantly...

The sustainable production and supply of raw materials (“nonenergy raw materials”) and primary energy carriers (“energy raw materials”) is a core element of many policies. The natural resource base for their production and supply, and the access thereto, are limited. Moreover, raw material supply is high on environmental and social impact agendas a...

The paper examines, under specific local situation of planning of innovative solutions for municipal solid waste treatment, the results obtained from a technical, economic and environmental comparison between two different scenarios for waste management: the first scenario foresees the gasification of the residual waste after separate collection an...

Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) in classical Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) aims at analyzing potential impacts of products and services typically on three so-called Areas of Protection (AoPs): natural environment, human health and natural resources. This paper proposes an elaboration of the AoP Natural Resources. It starts with analyzing differen...