| Abstract |
Raw materials are very important for the development of economies and also to assure quality of life. Due to our production and consumption patterns new challenges emerged. The consumption of raw materials is very high, what raises important issues such as the depletion of resources, instability of prices and markets, risk of rupture of supply and other environmental, economic and social impacts. The European Union as many other regions of the world are implementing some strategies to overcome this problem, being the most recent the circular economy package, which intends to maintain materials as long as possible in the economic cycle, avoiding the use of new resources. There is a list of critical raw materials for EU and in this work the methodology of pairwise comparison was applied to a set of those raw materials for determining the importance of each taking in consideration several factors, such import reliance, end of life, economic importance, etc. The main goal was to develop a method based on pairwise comparison in a case of European Union to define priorities for acting, enhancing the achievement of sustainable solutions. It was also performed a sensitivity analysis. It was possible to conclude that the top position for the majority of the several raw materials does not change with the weights. Tantalum, Tungsten, Baryte and Antimony are always in the top positions. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. |
