Letters to the Editor The Impact of Mineral Resource Depletion

address scarcity issues. Within the LCIA working group it is recommended that the work of Müller-Wenk (1998) be deemed as current best practice for metal resources. To re-duce uncertainty in the LCIA, it is subsequently argued to consider the present social contexts with a shorter time line in terms of reserves, e.g. 100 years. Of course it would be necessary to update such 'scarcity ' on a regular basis, e.g. every 10 years. The separation of environmental and economic aspects is an important issue to consider for the actual 'impact ' of re-source depletion, and specifically the comparison of one mineral resource to another. Steen argues that there is no environmental mechanism with a common node for abiotic resources; they are not exchangeable from an environmen-tal perspective. Finnveden (2005) highlights the impacts o