Life Cycle Assessment of tin production

Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) are a widely used technique to assess, understand and evaluate the magnitude and significant potential environmental impacts for a product system.

As part of its members’ commitment to sustainable development, The International Tin Association (ITA) commissioned a LCA to quantify the environmental impacts of the production of refined tin. Full Member companies of the ITA, which were collectively responsible for approximately 55% of the global refined tin production provided data for the reference year 2018/2019. The study covered cradle-to-gate primary and secondary production and was undertaken according to ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 standards with a functional unit as 1 tonne of refined tin (99.95%).

The LCA included impacts associated with the extraction of resources from mining and beneficiation, and smelting and refining. The results are representative of the industry average for refined tin production, and therefore do not correspond with any specific technology route or region but are rather inclusive of the technologies being used by at least one of the producers participating in the study.

The outcomes generated from this LCA will inform stakeholders about the inputs and outputs and related environmental impacts for the production of refined tin and supplement LCA efforts undertaken by producer companies individually. ITA full member companies are committed to providing stakeholders with the most recent life cycle data and are working with ITA towards improving the accuracy of the data for industry average LCAs and demonstrating environmental improvements and efficiencies.

For further information or to discuss participation please contact [email protected]