Management of Mining, Quarrying and Ore-processing Waste in the European Union

4 Summary At the request of the Environment Directorate-General of the European Commission, BRGM (Bureau de Recherches Géologiques et Minières) has conducted a study on the management of mining, quarrying and ore-processing waste in the European Union. This project was completed mainly through the use of questionnaire sent to subcontractors in almost each country of the EU. To assess this information and to extrapolate to the next twenty years, this approach has been reinforced using published estimators 1 on the waste quantity from the knowledge of produced metals. Mining-selected waste (or simply mining waste) can be defined as a part of materials that result from the exploration, mining and concentration of substances governed by legislation on mines and quarries Identification of the environmental risks associated with such waste requires the characterisation and quantification of their different types but also an assessment of the vulnerability of the specific environments contingent upon the geological and hydrogeological conditions and peripheral targets. 1.-Characterisation and quantification of the different types of waste. This report is based on country-by-country inventory, within the European Union, of sites associated with the management of mining, quarrying and ore-processing waste. It represents the first overview of the current situation in Europe as regards mining waste and presents the current regulatory and management measures specific to each country. The survey involved two approaches: • a questionnaire related to the quantities of existing waste, associated with the typology of the mined substance(s), waste deposit(s) and mining systems and ore-processing method(s), • an estimation, on the basis of the different processes employed throughout the production chain in mining operations and their management at each level, of the main types of waste generated over the last five or ten years. Comparison between the estimated data with the data obtained from the questionnaires reveals differences in the results that are due mainly to different national regulatory approaches to fill in the questionnaire. Furthermore, legal definitions concerning the types of mining waste, from both the exploitation and processing standpoints may differ in spite of a common glossary defined at the beginning of the study. For example, certain materials have an important recycling potential within a given environmental and economic framework and are not always considered locally as waste despite the legal definition of waste. 5 2.-Assessment of risks linked to mining waste. The notion of environmental impact of mining activities is only fully meaningful if it …