IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/recore/v55y2011i3p362-381.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Material efficiency: A white paper

Author

Listed:
  • Allwood, Julian M.
  • Ashby, Michael F.
  • Gutowski, Timothy G.
  • Worrell, Ernst

Abstract

For most materials used to provide buildings, infrastructure, equipment and products, global stocks are still sufficient to meet anticipated demand, but the environmental impacts of materials production and processing, particularly those related to energy, are rapidly becoming critical. These impacts can be ameliorated to some extent by the ongoing pursuit of efficiencies within existing processes, but demand is anticipated to double in the next 40 years, and this will lead to an unacceptable increase in overall impacts unless the total requirement for material production and processing is reduced. This is the goal of material efficiency, and this paper aims to stimulate interest in the area. Four major strategies for reducing material demand through material efficiency are discussed: longer-lasting products; modularisation and remanufacturing; component re-use; designing products with less material. In industrialised nations, these strategies have had little attention, because of economic, regulatory and social barriers, which are each examined. However, evidence from waste management and the pursuit of energy efficiency suggests that these barriers might be overcome, and an outline of potential mechanisms for change is given. In bringing together insights into material efficiency from a wide range of disciplines, the paper presents a set of 20 open questions for future work.

Suggested Citation

  • Allwood, Julian M. & Ashby, Michael F. & Gutowski, Timothy G. & Worrell, Ernst, 2011. "Material efficiency: A white paper," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 55(3), pages 362-381.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:55:y:2011:i:3:p:362-381
    DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2010.11.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921344910002405
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.resconrec.2010.11.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Prettenthaler, Franz E. & Steininger, Karl W., 1999. "From ownership to service use lifestyle: the potential of car sharing," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(3), pages 443-453, March.
    2. Tim Cooper, 2005. "Slower Consumption Reflections on Product Life Spans and the “Throwaway Society”," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 9(1‐2), pages 51-67, January.
    3. Robert M. Solow, 1974. "The Economics of Resources or the Resources of Economics," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Chennat Gopalakrishnan (ed.), Classic Papers in Natural Resource Economics, chapter 12, pages 257-276, Palgrave Macmillan.
    4. Ayres, Robert U. & van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M., 2005. "A theory of economic growth with material/energy resources and dematerialization: Interaction of three growth mechanisms," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 55(1), pages 96-118, October.
    5. Ayres, Robert & Ferrer, Geraldo & Van Leynseele, Tania, 1997. "Eco-efficiency, asset recovery and remanufacturing," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 15(5), pages 557-574, October.
    6. Truttmann, Nina & Rechberger, Helmut, 2006. "Contribution to resource conservation by reuse of electrical and electronic household appliances," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 48(3), pages 249-262.
    7. Zengwei Yuan & Jun Bi & Yuichi Moriguichi, 2006. "The Circular Economy: A New Development Strategy in China," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 10(1‐2), pages 4-8, January.
    8. Aleklett, Kjell & Höök, Mikael & Jakobsson, Kristofer & Lardelli, Michael & Snowden, Simon & Söderbergh, Bengt, 2010. "The Peak of the Oil Age - Analyzing the world oil production Reference Scenario in World Energy Outlook 2008," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 1398-1414, March.
    9. Vries,Jan de, 2008. "The Industrious Revolution," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521719254.
    10. Cees van Beers & André de Moor, 2001. "Public Subsidies and Policy Failures," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 2040.
    11. de Almeida, Pedro & Silva, Pedro D., 2009. "The peak of oil production--Timings and market recognition," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1267-1276, April.
    12. Schipper, Lee & Grubb, Michael, 2000. "On the rebound? Feedback between energy intensities and energy uses in IEA countries," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 28(6-7), pages 367-388, June.
    13. Druckman, A. & Jackson, T., 2008. "Household energy consumption in the UK: A highly geographically and socio-economically disaggregated model," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 36(8), pages 3167-3182, August.
    14. Szargut, Jan, 1989. "Chemical exergies of the elements," Applied Energy, Elsevier, vol. 32(4), pages 269-286.
    15. Harold Hotelling, 1931. "The Economics of Exhaustible Resources," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 39, pages 137-137.
    16. Nick Hogg & Tim Jackson, 2009. "Digital Media and Dematerialization," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 13(1), pages 127-146, February.
    17. Arnold Tukker & Bart Jansen, 2006. "Environmental Impacts of Products: A Detailed Review of Studies," Journal of Industrial Ecology, Yale University, vol. 10(3), pages 159-182, July.
    18. Ferrer, Geraldo & Ayres, Robert U., 2000. "The impact of remanufacturing in the economy," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(3), pages 413-429, March.
    19. Alexander, Catherine & Smaje, Chris, 2008. "Evaluating third sector reuse organisations in the UK: Case-studies and analysis of furniture reuse schemes," Resources, Conservation & Recycling, Elsevier, vol. 52(5), pages 719-730.
    20. Dinda, Soumyananda, 2004. "Environmental Kuznets Curve Hypothesis: A Survey," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(4), pages 431-455, August.
    21. Sorrell, Steve & Dimitropoulos, John & Sommerville, Matt, 2009. "Empirical estimates of the direct rebound effect: A review," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 1356-1371, April.
    22. Bentley, R.W. & Mannan, S.A. & Wheeler, S.J., 2007. "Assessing the date of the global oil peak: The need to use 2P reserves," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(12), pages 6364-6382, December.
    23. Vries,Jan de, 2008. "The Industrious Revolution," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521895026.
    24. George A. Akerlof, 1970. "The Market for "Lemons": Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 84(3), pages 488-500.
    25. Rubin, Edward S. & Chen, Chao & Rao, Anand B., 2007. "Cost and performance of fossil fuel power plants with CO2 capture and storage," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(9), pages 4444-4454, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alcott, Blake, 2008. "The sufficiency strategy: Would rich-world frugality lower environmental impact," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 64(4), pages 770-786, February.
    2. Manel Kamoun & Ines Abdelkafi & Abdelfetah Ghorbel, 2019. "The Impact of Renewable Energy on Sustainable Growth: Evidence from a Panel of OECD Countries," Journal of the Knowledge Economy, Springer;Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET), vol. 10(1), pages 221-237, March.
    3. Dorothée Charlier & Florian Fizaine, 2020. "Does Becoming Richer Lead to a Reduction in Natural Resource Consumption? An Empirical Refutation of the Kuznets Material Curve," Working Papers 2020.05, FAERE - French Association of Environmental and Resource Economists.
    4. David I. Stern, 2010. "The Role of Energy in Economic Growth," CCEP Working Papers 0310, Centre for Climate & Energy Policy, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University.
    5. Fantazzini, Dean & Höök, Mikael & Angelantoni, André, 2011. "Global oil risks in the early 21st century," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 7865-7873.
    6. Wiedenhofer, Dominik & Lenzen, Manfred & Steinberger, Julia K., 2013. "Energy requirements of consumption: Urban form, climatic and socio-economic factors, rebounds and their policy implications," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 696-707.
    7. Nyambuu, Unurjargal & Semmler, Willi, 2020. "Climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy – Carbon targets and the carbon budget," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 367-376.
    8. Motavasseli, Ali, 2016. "Essays in environmental policy and household economics," Other publications TiSEM b32e287e-169b-4e89-9878-1, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    9. Martin de Wit & Matthew Kuperus Heun & Douglas J Crookes, 2013. "An overview of salient factors, relationships and values to support integrated energy-economic systems dynamic modelling," Working Papers 02/2013, Stellenbosch University, Department of Economics.
    10. Harvey, L.D.D., 2013. "Global climate-oriented transportation scenarios," Energy Policy, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 87-103.
    11. Alberto Quadrio Curzio & Fausta Pellizzari & Roberto Zoboli, 2011. "Resources and Technologies," CRANEC - Working Papers del Centro di Ricerche in Analisi economica e sviluppo economico internazionale crn1101, Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore, Centro di Ricerche in Analisi economica e sviluppo economico internazionale (CRANEC).
    12. Dale W. Henderson & Stephen W. Salant, 1976. "Market anticipations, government policy, and the price of gold," International Finance Discussion Papers 81, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.).
    13. Hala Abu-Kalla & Ruslana Rachel Palatnik & Ofira Ayalon & Mordechai Shechter, 2020. "Hoard or Exploit? Intergenerational Allocation of Exhaustible Natural Resources," Energies, MDPI, vol. 13(24), pages 1-20, December.
    14. Todd D. Gerarden & Richard G. Newell & Robert N. Stavins, 2017. "Assessing the Energy-Efficiency Gap," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 55(4), pages 1486-1525, December.
    15. Devarajan, Shantayanan & Fisher, Anthony C, 1981. "Hotelling's "Economics of Exhaustible Resources": Fifty Years Later," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 19(1), pages 65-73, March.
    16. Franco, Marco P.V. & Gaspard, Marion & Mueller, Thomas, 2019. "Time discounting in Harold Hotelling's approach to natural resource economics: The unsolved ethical question," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 52-60.
    17. Benchekroun, Hassan & Ray Chaudhuri, Amrita & Tasneem, Dina, 2020. "On the impact of trade in a common property renewable resource oligopoly," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    18. Chitnis, Mona & Sorrell, Steve & Druckman, Angela & Firth, Steven K. & Jackson, Tim, 2014. "Who rebounds most? Estimating direct and indirect rebound effects for different UK socioeconomic groups," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 12-32.
    19. Lange, Steffen & Pohl, Johanna & Santarius, Tilman, 2020. "Digitalization and energy consumption. Does ICT reduce energy demand?," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 176(C).
    20. Sorin-George Toma & Paul Marinescu & Catalin Gradinaru, 2016. "The Age Of Sustainable Business Models," Management Strategies Journal, Constantin Brancoveanu University, vol. 34(4), pages 128-132.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:recore:v:55:y:2011:i:3:p:362-381. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kai Meng (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/resources-conservation-and-recycling .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.