Assessment of environmental impacts in travertine mining with life cycle approach

Interest in the concepts of mining and sustainability is increasing worldwide and in our country, which reveals the need to make the mining sector more sustainable. In particular, natural stones are widely used in construction, building and cladding and make significant contributions to both economic growth and environmental sustainability. Travertine, one of the natural stones, is defined as "continental carbonate rocks" formed with springs fed by supersaturated calcium carbonate waters from a deep hydrothermal cycle. In this study, the environmental impacts of travertine block production in Kaklık travertine quarry in Çal district of Denizli province were revealed by using LCA method. In this context, the cutting and in quarry transport stages in the travertine quarry were taken into consideration, the functional unit was selected as 1 m3 travertine block production and the LCA analysis was carried out using GaBi Education (version 8.0) software. The system boundary was determined as cradle to gate. The CML-2001 impact assessment method was used to assess eleven different impact categories, including global warming potential, acidification and eutrophication potential. According to the findings, the GWP value for 1 m3 travertine block production was determined as 32,6 kg CO₂ equivalent. The results show that the largest contribution to all impact categories is due to the electricity used in the cutting process and the use of diesel in the transport process. In this study, in addition to the results on the environmental impacts of travertine block production, improvement scenarios including the use of solar and wind energy as renewable energy sources in the cutting stage were created in order to reduce environmental impacts. Thanks to the solar and wind energy utilisation scenarios, the GWP value for 1 m3 travertine block production has improved to 7,18 kg CO2 equivalent and 6,03 kg CO2 equivalent, respectively.