Nordic Sustainable Minerals

Introduction

Nordic Sustainable Minerals project attempts to address two strategically important issues, 1) traceability of primary mineral resources and 2) recovery and recycling of secondary mineral resources. Both objectives are essential for ensuring efficient use of mineral resources and reinforcing Nordic leadership in global sustainability endeavors.

The traceability objective aims to test the concept for using inherent geochemical signatures for rare earth minerals and metals to be potentially produced in the Nordic nations. It will endow added values to Nordic REE minerals and metals, and more importantly potentially kickstart the development of an effective traceability technique for tracing metals along the whole value chain at a global scale.

Reducing mining waste as well as extracting and reusing some of the useful materials that earlier would have gone to mining waste has been a big priority in the minerals sector. To support the transition towards the circular economy, the recovery and recycling objective aims to develop a systematic classification methodology for secondary mineral resources as compared to primary resources, to foster metal re-mining and recovery practices, and production from secondary resources.

The specific objectives of the project are:

1) Understand the whole spectrum of existing traceability approaches and related research projects
2) Develop a proof of concept for GeoPass via theoretical analysis and pilot studies
3) Provide perspectives for establishing global-scale and lifecycle-long traceability systems
4) Creation of a systematic classification method to evaluate secondary resources as primary resources.
5) Methodology for the development and design of a CRM database and new data capturing strategies to obtain resource data estimates.
6) Methodology for the identification, prioritization, and definition of pilot studies on secondary resources of historical mine waste sites.

The project is coordinated by Geological Survey of Finland (GTK). The other co-operating partners are Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, Geological Survey of Norway, Geological Survey of Sweden, Iceland GeoSurvey, Ministry of Mineral Resources Government of Greenland, Norwegian Directorate of Mining and University of Iceland, Faculty of Earth Sciences.

The Nordic Sustainable Minerals project is funded by Nordic Innovation, an organization under the Nordic Council of Ministers. The project is part of the eight initiatives launched by the five Nordic Ministers of Trade and Industry, which represent a solid move towards a more resilient and sustainable Nordic region. It will support the strive to position Nordics as the frontrunners within global sustainable mineral production.

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