SARA4UNFC: A holistic approach to assessing mining and extractive waste activities

The supply security of Critical Raw Materials (CRMs) has led to the adoption of the European Union Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA), drawing increased attention to the occurrence of CRMs in both primary deposits and secondary sources, including extractive waste. The CRMA explicitly refers to the United Nations Framework Classification for Resources (UNFC) as a reporting and classification system, and strategic projects are expected to apply UNFC principles. However, a key challenge for project developers lies in identifying and applying the technical, environmental, economic, social, and legal criteria required for consistent UNFC-based classification, particularly for anthropogenic and extractive waste resources.

Within the Horizon Europe project FutuRaM, a structured anthropogenic resource assessment tool, SARA4UNFC, was developed to address this challenge and to guide project developers through the UNFC classification process. SARA4UNFC is implemented as a web-based decision-support tool that operationalises the UNFC through a transparent, stepwise procedure covering project definition, recovery process selection, stakeholder identification, evaluation of controlling factors, and final resource classification, with emphasis on influencing environmental-socio-economic viability, technical feasibility, and the level of confidence in the estimated quantities of the products.

The assessment framework integrates two complementary methodological layers. At the early screening stage, a five-step UNFC-compliant screening procedure is applied to support rapid, data-efficient identification of project potential and key barriers using publicly available information and expert judgement. This screening phase enables an initial classification of projects and supports decisions on whether further detailed evaluation is warranted. Projects that pass screening proceed to a structured seven-stage assessment procedure designed for prefeasibility and feasibility levels.

The seven-stage procedure incorporates project development phase–specific requirements. It supports the systematic selection and evaluation of controlling factors in accordance with the chosen context of evaluation in the Realm of Discourse (ROD), including law-based, circular economy–oriented, and sustainability-focused assessments. By systematically linking project-specific information to UNFC categories, SARA4UNFC facilitates traceable documentation of assumptions and results, including data sources, throughout the classification process, based on expert judgements. This approach enables the development of alternative recovery pathways and the identification of key project constraints and risks. The structured workflow improves transparency and comparability across projects while supporting alignment with regulatory and sustainability objectives. Through selected use cases related to extractive waste valorisation, the tool demonstrated its applicability for supporting responsible resource management. SARA4UNFC thus meets the policy-driven classification requirements stipulated in the Critical Raw Materials Act of the EU. In addition, structured data collection and the assessment of relevant factors enable fact-based decision-making at the project level.

Keywords: Resource recovery; Project classification; Secondary raw materials; UNFC; Web tool