Educating about Critical Raw Materials and Life Cycle Sustainablity Assessment

Materials Criticality is not a new topic, but it is taking a stronger place in sustainability discourse now due to various factors, such as an increased complexity and globalisation of supply chains, proliferation of frameworks for Environmental Social and Governance performance (ESGs) disclosure for companies to name just a few. Social risk, related to materials, is getting more and more recognised, similar to environmental impact or a price volatility risk. More research and teaching on the topic of critical raw materials is taking place. An example is a Massive Open Online Course SusCritMOOC, developed by consortium of academics and industry representatives, initiated and funded by the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT RawMaterials). This MOOC has now run on EdEx several times with satellite online and onsite events. In this talk we discuss the topics, surrounding critical materials and how they could be integrated in teaching, provide example of a tool to introduce Social Life Cycle Assessment – Social Impact Audit Tool, developed in-house at Ansys, and, taking a step further, showcase an approach to Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA), as a framework for integrating social, economic and environmental impact of a product, based on Mike Ashby's latest LCSA methodology (Ashby, 2022). This is an approach to be used in education and for decision-making.