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ORIENTING was at the roundtable of the EU Green Week Partner Event – Quantifying Environmental Impact in Rare Earth Value Chains (10/06/2021), sharing knowledge and best practices in life-cycle assessment approaches with experts from Europe and beyond.

Rare earth elements (REEs) – Critical raw materials essential for the European Green Deal as well as Europe’s digital transformation, with widespread applications in clean, high and consumer-tech as well as in manufacturing industry sectors. Extracting and processing of REEs comes with considerable environmental challenges.

More than 120 people, mainly stakeholders of rare earth/raw material sector, discussed about how to quantify environmental and climate impacts in rare earth value chains through life-cycle assessment.

Orienting presented its key objectives and state of play, as well as its broad scope in terms of products – including those containing rare earths – the use of ontologies and challenges/needs relating to the development of a LCSA methodology for different users.

The participatory nature of the Orienting project was mentioned in several occasions to highlight that also qualitative aspects and opinions of citizens matters: all participants were invited to register as stakeholders of Orienting.

About the organisers

SecREEts and SUSMAGPRO are two flagship R&I projects funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. Our goal is to establish a resilient, sustainable and competitive European supply chain for REE – SecREEts based on a sustainable REEs extraction from fertiliser production, and SUSMAGPRO by recovering them from end-of-life permanent magnets.

This event was supported by the Rare Earth Industry Association (REIA): REIA is an international non-profit organisation representing the global rare earth element (REE) industry with active members worldwide.