An analytical and flexible approach for the Life Cycle Assessment of stone products

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 project aims to contribute to fill the gap of LCA datasets specific to stone industry processes in order to allow producers and researchers to more accurately evaluate the sustainability of stone products. Moreover, a flexible LCA model was created to enable the calculation of environmental burdens of specific quarries and specific productions. To achieve this goal, the most common Italian granite and marble industrial processes were identified and an LCA parameterized model was developed. The advantage of this approach lies in the possibility of transversally supporting the stone sector with an analytical but flexible tool.