Description
We live in a material world. How our society uses materials is fundamental to many aspects of our economic and environmental future. If we want the U.S. to be competitive in the woreconomy, the sustainable use of materials must be our goal.
Acknowledgements
THE 2020 VISION WORKGROUP
Derry Allen, US EPA National Center for Environmental Innovation
Shannon Davis, US EPA Region 9
Priscilla Halloran, US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery
Peggy Harris, California Department of Toxic Substances Control
Kathy Hart, US EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics
Jennifer Kaduck, Georgia Department of Natural Resources
Angela Leith, US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery
Clare Lindsay, US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery
Mark McDermid, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Wayne Naylor, US EPA Region 3
Sam Sasnett, US EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics
Scott Palmer, US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery
Karen Sismour, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality
Pam Swingle, US EPA Region 4
Contractor support provided by Ross & Associates Environmental Consulting, Ltd. and
SRA International.
EPA530R09009
Table of Contents
Executive Summary .................................................................................................. i
Introduction: Our Material World................................................................................ 1
Chapter 1: A Resource Hungry World.......................................................................... 4
Understanding the Flow of Materials......................................................................... 4
Trends in Global Material Consumption and Environmental Impact ............................... 4
Trends in U.S. Material Consumption and Environmental Impact .................................. 7
Global and U.S. Trends: Looking Ahead................................................................... 8
Leading the U.S. to a More Sustainable Future: Materials Management ....................... 10
How Does Materials Management Differ From Current Approaches? ............................ 13
Chapter 2: Building an Analytic Framework................................................................ 18
Developing the Framework ................................................................................... 18
Applying the Framework to the U.S. Economy ......................................................... 20
What We Found .................................................................................................. 22
Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 23
Chapter 3: Workgroup Recommendations for Achieving Sustainable Materials
Management ...................................................................................................... 27
Recommendation 1: Promote efforts to manage materials and products on a
life-cycle basis .................................................................................................... 28
Recommendation 2: Build capacity and integrate materials management approaches
in existing government programs .......................................................................... 33
Recommendation 3: Accelerate the broad, ongoing public dialogue on life-cycle
materials management ........................................................................................ 37
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1: Materials Consumption in the United States by Sector of Origin, 1975–2000 ....... 2
Figure 2: The Flow of Materials .................................................................................. 5
Figure 3: Framework for Examining Materials Management .......................................... 11
Figure 4: Materials Management Approaches ............................................................. 12
Figure 5: Example of a Life-cycle Materials Management Approach for Packaging ............ 17
F
Table 1: Summary of Top-Ranked Materials, Products, and Services.............................. 25
igure 6: U.S. Supply Chain Perspectives .................................................................. 21
Appendix: Relative Ranking Technical Support Document
(separate document)
Executive Summary
We live in a material world. How our society
uses materials is fundamental to many aspects
of our economic and environmental future. If
we want the U.S. to be competitive in the wor
economy, the sustainable use of materials must
be our goal.
ld
Our key message is simple.
• Our use of materials is very large and
increasing with population and economic
growth. Energy and water use accompany
materials use.
• Our use of materials now challenges the capacity of the Earth – air, water and land – to
withstand the many resulting environmental problems. This situation fundamentally
affects many other aspects of our future, such as the economy, energy and climate. We
need to fulfill our human needs and prosper while using less material, reducing toxics
and recovering more. Business as usual cannot continue.
• The public and private sectors have many of the tools that we need to manage materials
much more carefully than we typically do today. However, these tools are seldom used
to address the full life cycle of materials. This report describes specific measures that
EPA and state environmental agencies can take to: (1) promote efforts to manage
materials and products on a life-cycle basis, using present authorities, (2) build our
capacity to manage materials in the future, and (3) accelerate the public dialogue
necessary to start a generation-long shift in how we manage materials and create a
green, resilient and competitive economy. We should begin aggressively.
Our Material World
The foundation that underlies the world economy, prosperity and a healthy environment
rests largely on how people extract and use the full range of materials that come from and
return to the Earth such as wood, minerals, fuels, chemicals, agricultural plants and
animals, soil, and rock.
The world at large and the United States in particular use vast amounts of materials and
those amounts are rapidly increasing.
Executive Summary | Page i
In the past 50 years, humans have consumed more resources than in all previous
history.
The U.S. consumed 57% more materials in the year 2000 than in 1975; the global
increase was even higher.
With less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. was responsible for about one-
third of the world’s total material consumption in 1970-1995.
In 1900, 41% of the materials used in the U.S. were renewable (e.g., agricultural,
fishery, and forestry products); by 1995, only 6% of materials consumed were
renewable. The majority of materials now consumed in the U.S. are nonrenewable,
including metals, minerals, and fossil-fuel derived products.
Our reliance on minerals as fundamental ingredients in the manufactured products used
in the U.S.—including cell phones, flat-screen monitors, paint, and toothpaste—requires
the extraction of more than 25,000 pounds of new nonfuel minerals per capita each
year.
This rapid rise in material use has led to serious environmental effects such as habitat
destruction, biodiversity loss, overly stressed fisheries, and desertification.
Projections are that between 2000 and 2050, world population will grow 50%, global
economic activity will grow 500%, and global energy and materials use will grow
300%. Commenting on the effects of material resource use on the environment, the heads
of major research institutes in the United States, Germany, Japan, Austria, and the
Netherlands have noted that “unless economic growth can be dramatically decoupled
from resource use and waste generation, environmental pressures will increase
rapidly.
1
”
The strategic importance of materials is causing many people to look very carefully at all
aspects of the material life cycle that comprise our industrial practices and consumer habits.
The material lifecycle begins with the extraction or harvesting of raw materials. Materials
are then transported and processed to create the products and services that drive our
society. They are distributed, consumed, reused or recycled, and ultimately disposed.
Each stage of this cycle requires energy and water as inputs and creates impacts on the
environment. Because the stages are interrelated, it is important that sound approaches to
materials use consider the entire life cycle. The price system, regulatory framework,
technical information and human mindsets must all work together to enable and encourage
life-cycle materials management – an approach to serving human needs by
using/reusing resources most productively and sustainably throughout their life
cycles, generally minimizing the amount of materials involved and all the
associated environmental impacts.
By considering system-wide impacts, life-cycle materials management casts a far broader
net than traditional waste and chemicals management approaches and represents a change
Executive Summary | Page ii
in how we think about environmental protection. There are many means by which life-cycle
materials management can be accomplished. For instance, careful industrial and product
design that red
uces virgin material use and reuses materials can reduce impacts throughout
e system.
ve the
o
rtain impacts, but rarely take meaningful account of upstream or
ownstream effects.
e view of
eir materials and processes and becoming more sustainable and competitive.
Origin of This Report
m
ving in this direction and in the years that followed they have continued to
ake progress.
t
develop a roadmap to accelerate the move toward sustainable
aterials management.
Building an Analytic Framework
eously.
nt
th
While there are a number of existing EPA and state programs that are helping to mo
U.S. toward a more material-efficient society, there is no comprehensive materials
management strategy at the Federal level. Regulations and economic instruments seek t
prevent or mitigate ce
d
To accomplish the shift to life-cycle materials management, governments at all levels need
to make systematic efforts to enable, encourage, and collaborate with all parts of society,
including business and consumers, to ensure that materials are used more efficiently and
effectively. There is much work to be done, but there also is reason for modest optimism.
An increasing number of industries and individual companies are taking a life-cycl
th
In 2002, EPA published “Beyond RCRA: Waste and Materials Management in the Year
2020”—commonly referred to as the 2020 Vision. The 2020 Vision was the product of a
state/EPA workgroup and was endorsed by EPA and state environmental and waste progra
officials. One of the key findings was the need for society to shift focus away from waste
management toward materials management. Even before the Vision’s release, states and
EPA had been mo
m
In January 2007 the directors of EPA’s waste and chemical programs convened the presen
2020 Vision Workgroup to
m
The U.S. economy is a highly complex and intertwined system that transforms a few
hundred raw materials into thousands of products. It would be unrealistic to focus on and
transform all the materials and products consumed in an entire economy simultan
Instead, the Workgroup recommends a strategy that includes a few well-chosen
demonstration projects to provide insights into applying integrated materials manageme
approaches (including the need for better coordination of resources, product and waste
programs). To help identify candidates for these demonstration projects, the Workgroup
developed a framework to relatively rank the materials, products and services consumed in
the U.S. from a life-cycle perspective, accounting for the environmental impacts, resource
Executive Summary | Page iii
use (material, energy, water), and waste. This framework reflects the Workgroup’s
that these are the types of information that must be accounted for from a lifecycle
perspective when applying materials management. Thirty-eight (38) materials, products
and services were identified as possible candidates for demonstration projects. These can b
roughly grouped into construction and development, food products and servi
belief
e
ces, forestry,
etals, nonrenewable organics, textiles, and other products and services.
Recommendations
r
d Development (OECD) and the Group of 8
8) endorsed by the United States in 2008.
d
cus of
should be expanded to encompass life-cycle
aterials management more fully.
ing
o
s. EPA and states should
cognize and support champions who make this happen.
eholder
omentum
icipate in
ternational efforts related to sustainable material management.
m
The Workgroup makes three major recommendations to EPA and state environmental
agencies. Some of these recommendations reflect points in international agreements unde
the Organization for Economic Cooperation an
(G
1. Promote efforts to manage materials and products on a life-cycle basis. EPA an
state environmental agencies should initiate demonstration projects on a few well-chosen
materials and products to show the value of integrated materials management strategies.
Further, these agencies should incorporate materials management as an important strategic
approach for addressing climate change and other environmental challenges. The fo
existing chemical and waste programs
m
2. Build capacity and integrate materials management approaches in exist
government programs. EPA and state environmental agencies must ensure the
availability of data and decision tools needed to support life-cycle materials management,
including necessary research. Materials management strategies should be integrated int
regulatory development, permitting and partnership program
re
3. Accelerate the broad, ongoing public dialogue on life-cycle materials
management. Governments alone cannot bring about the shift to life-cycle materials
management. EPA and state environmental agencies should convene multi-stak
national dialogues on materials management to create public awareness of the
environmental consequences of material and product choices and accelerate the m
toward change at all levels. It also will be critical for the Agency to part
in
Executive Summary | Page iv
RECOMMENDATIONS
RECOMMENDATION 1: Promote efforts to
manage materials and products on a life-cycle
basis.
1.1 Select a few materials/products for an
integrated life-cycle approach, and launch
demonstration projects.
1.2 Expand the focus of existing environmental
programs to encompass life-cycle materials
management more fully.
1.3 Promote specific materials management
approaches that can help address climate
change.
1.4 Promote greener products, product
stewardship, and product-to-service
transformations.
1.5 Strengthen market signals to reduce waste and
other adverse environmental impacts
throughout the life cycle of materials.
RECOMMENDATION 2: Build capacity and
integrate materials management approaches
in existing government programs.
2.1 Establish and improve databases to promote
materials management.
2.2 Improve decision tools to support life-cycle
materials management.
2.3 Expand research and innovations support
programs to promote materials management.
2.4 Emphasize materials management in EPA and
state processes and procedures.
2.5 Support and reward federal, state, tribal, and
local champions for materials management and
encourage collaboration.
RECOMMENDATION 3: Accelerate the broad,
ongoing public dialogue on life-cycle materials
management.
3.1 Stimulate a national conversation about
materials management, engaging multiple
networks.
3.2 Open a dialogue on economic instruments to
encourage better materials management.
3.3 Create ways to share knowledge on materials
management.
These recommendations represent
parallel paths that should be taken at
the same time. Specific actions
described under each recommendation
are a mix of near term and long term
efforts to develop the data, information,
programs, policies, and partnerships
that will begin to change the ways we
think about and use materials.
These changes will not be easy. This
report is a roadmap to the year 2020 –
eleven years away. While this is not
enough time to complete the changes
recommended, it is enough time to
make substantial progress. Starting
now is critical because many of the
issues we are facing require long-term
solutions that cannot be put into place
quickly when a problem becomes
obvious or acute. The recommendations
can be an important element of our
national strategy to address current
economic, energy, environment and
climate issues and set us on a course to
be more prosperous, competitive and
resilient for years to come.
Executive Summary | Page v
Introduction:
Our Material World
Wood, minerals, fuels, chemicals, agricultural
plants and animals, soil, rock and other
materials form the foundation that underlies
both the economy and the environment.
Climate change, energy policy, and the
economy all create headlines, but the stories
that follow often miss the point that all these
issues are, in part, symptoms of how we use
materials. It is becoming increasingly clear
that how we use materials is a large factor in
energy use, climate change and the economy, and an important issue in its own right.
Therefore, if we want to address the issues behind the headlines, and if we want the U.S
be competitive in the world economy, sustainable use of materials must be our goa
. to
l.
The United States uses vast amounts of materials and these amounts are rapidly
increasing—we consumed 57% more materials (by weight) in the year 2000 than we did in
1975 (see Figure 1). As described in Chapter 1, the global increase in materials use was
higher. Materials returning to the environment increased 26% from 1975 to 2000 and the
amounts remaining in use (mainly as durable products, buildings and roads, or “net
additions to stock”) rose 83%.
2
Historically, population and economic growth and new
technologies have translated almost automatically into increased use of materials, energy
and water.
No matter how one does the calculations, the implications of current patterns of material
use for the environment (including climate), the economy and our survival are profound and
unsustainable. We must change the historical relationship of materials, energy, growth and
the environment. When used carefully, materials hold the keys to enormous opportunity,
both as our nation competes in the global economy and as we move into the 21
st
century.
Used carelessly, materials hold another set of keys, which open equally large threats to our
health, our economy and our environment.
The opportunities presented by sound life-cycle approaches to using materials are being
demonstrated in many places today. During the past several years, many companies and
organizations have discovered ways to do what was previously thought improbable or even
impossible. By changing the ways they use materials, they have found ways to lighten their
Introduction | Page 1
environmental impacts significantly while increasing profit. They are making the U.S. more
competitive with products that are recognized as more sustainable.
0,000
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
M
a
t
e
r
i
a
l
C
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
(
D
M
C
)
(
m
i
l
l
i
o
n
m
e
t
r
i
c
t
o
n
s
)
Forestry
Agriculture
Nonrenewable
Organic
Material
Metals and
Minerals
Figure 1: Materials Consumption in the United States by Sector of Origin, 1975–2000
Source: WRI Material Flows Database 2005
Threats to our environment caused by the ways we use materials are all around us and are
not new. In 1992, world leaders participating in the Earth Summit declared that “a
principal cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the
steady increase in materials production, consumption and disposal.”
3
In response,
governments around the world, including the U.S., have acknowledged the goal of
sustainable material use, but have struggled with how to achieve it.
This struggle about how best to manage materials demands a new level of awareness and
cooperation within and between nations. The world shares a finite set of materials and other
natural resources. We must know and respect the limits in order to live together and thrive
within our means.
The current economic situation makes the opportunities and threats related to materials
even more significant than they were only a short time ago. We are at a moment when
many people are receptive to new approaches for the economy and the environment. We
also observe many people and companies moving to use and spend less that they did
previously.
It is not clear what choices individuals and companies will make. Therefore, it is
important that both the federal and state governments make more systematic
efforts to enable, encourage, and collaborate with all parts of society to see that
materials are used more effectively and efficiently with less overall environmental
toll.
Introduction | Page 2
These changes will not be easy. This report is a roadmap to the year 2020—eleven years
away. Eleven years is not enough time to complete the changes this report describes, but it
is enough time to make substantial progress.
There are actions we can take now that would build on our present programs and enhance
our capacity for the future. We also need to accelerate the broad public dialogue about
materials management to develop a common understanding, an ethic, a vision and a plan to
move ahead. The recommendations in this report can be an important element of our
national strategy to address the recent economic, energy, environment and climate
headlines and set us on a course to be more prosperous, competitive and resilient for years
to come.
This report builds on an effort begun in 1999,
when EPA and state environmental agencies
began a national dialogue through the Future
of Waste Roundtable to suggest new ways of
addressing waste generation and the use of
our natural resources. In 2002, EPA published
“Beyond RCRA: Waste and Materials
Management in the Year 2020”—commonly
referred to as the 2020 Vision.
4
(See Box 1.)
Box 1
THE 2020 VISION
1. Use resources in sustainable ways.
2. Take a life-cycle approach to
managing risks.
3. Practice safe management for any
waste that remains.
The Vision was described in the 2002
report. It was endorsed by EPA, the
Environmental Council of the States and the
Association of State and Territorial Solid
Waste Management Officials.
One of the key findings of the 2020 Vision
was the need to shift from waste
management to materials management.
This report is organized as follows:
Chapter 1, “A Resource Hungry World,” describes trends in resource consumption,
environmental impacts and why better materials management is essential.
Chapter 2, “Building an Analytic Framework” describes the Workgroup’s analytic
approach to identifying materials and products that should be the initial focus of
materials management demonstration projects.
Chapter 3, “Workgroup Recommendations for Achieving Sustainable Materials
Management” contains the recommendations.
Introduction | Page 3
Chapter 1:
A Resource Hungry World
Understanding the Flow of
Materials
To understand the full effect that material use
has on the environment, it is critical to
understand the material life cycle, or how
materials flow through the environment and the
economy. The flow begins with the Earth itself,
which provides a wealth of resources, including
renewable and nonrenewable resource stocks,
and energy sources. After materials are extracted and harvested from the Earth, most enter
the product and service supply chains or are used for energy production. Through product
design and manufacturing, materials are processed to create the products and services that
meet the needs of society (see Figure 2).
Some raw materials and all products and services are then used or consumed by businesses
or individual consumers. At the end of their lives, most products are collected and either
reused, processed for return to use, or thrown away as waste.
Every step in this material flow requires energy and water as inputs and every step results
in environmental impacts to air, water, and land. Throughout the material flow, materials
and products require transport. As a result, this material flow contributes to a wide range of
global, national, and local environmental impacts.
Trends in Global Material Consumption and Environmental
Impact
In the past 50 years, humans have consumed more resources than they have in all previous
history.
5
Between 1970 and 1995 alone, worldwide consumption of raw materials (not
including food and fuel) doubled.
6
We can see the effects of material consumption on
localized areas, and global environmental systems. For example:
Chapter 1 | Page 4
Transportation
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Emissions to Air, Water, and Land
Renew Remanufacture Recycle Reuse Composting
Resource
Ext ract ion
Mat erial
Processing
Product
Design and
Manuf act uring
Disposal Collect ion/
Processing
Product
Use
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Figure 2: The Flow of Materials
Source: State/EPA 2020 Vision Workgroup
The rate of deforestation in the tropics is approximately one acre per second.
Half the world’s tropical and temperate forests are now gone.
75% of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity.
Freshwater withdrawals have doubled between 1960 and 2000; rivers including the
Colorado, Yellow, Ganges, and Nile do not reach the ocean in dry seasons.
Habitat destruction has contributed to species disappearance at rates about a thousand
times faster than normal.
Over half the agricultural land in drier regions suffers from some degree of deterioration
and desertification.
As available ore grades for some minerals decrease, the amounts of materials that have
to be mined and processed to produce equivalent product increases, along with the
environmental impacts.
Persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals can now be found throughout the food
chain.
7
Between 1970 and 2004, worldwide greenhouse gas emissions increased by 70%.
8
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth
century is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations associated with
anthropogenic sources, including the extraction, processing, use and disposal of
materials.
9
The World Wildlife Federation routinely calculates humanity’s ecological footprint—the area
of productive land and water needed to provide resources and services such as food, fiber,
and land on which to build, and land to absorb carbon dioxide released into the
Chapter 1 | Page 5
environment. This analysis is used to portray human demand, based on the biological
capacity required to support resource consumption and waste absorption.
Since the late 1980s, our human footprint has exceeded the Earth’s biocapacity. In 2005,
global biocapacity was measured as 2.1 hectares per capita, while the average demand or
footprint per person was 2.7 hectares. “This ecological 'overshoot' means that it now takes
about one year and three months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single
year.”
10
The Earth’s regenerative ability can no longer keep pace with human demand—
people are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into
resources. In economic terms, we are no longer living off nature’s interest, but drawing
down its capital.
11
Globally, we can no longer presume that materials and resources we
count on as abundant will remain so indefinitely.
In addition to exceeding the Earth’s biocapacity by extracting too many materials, we return
most of what we extract to the Earth as waste very quickly. According to the World
Resources Institute, “one half to three quarters of annual resource inputs to industrial
economies is returned to the environment as wastes within just one year.”
12
Prices for many materials are heavily influenced by global markets. During the past several
years, increased demand caused worldwide prices for many raw and used materials to rise
substantially. The recent economic situation, however, has reduced demand, causing prices
for many materials to drop. The immediate effect of this has been to weaken recycling
markets. If prices stay low, demand may increase over time. However, neither of these
trends is helpful for long-term materials management or the environment.
13
In general, it is widely understood that the price system leads to economically efficient
allocation of material resources, but that does not mean that it necessarily encourages
sustainable materials management. For instance, over the past 200 years, real prices for
many industrial raw materials have fallen, often because of improved technology and low
energy prices.
14
This has helped stimulate unparalleled economic growth, but, as mentioned
above, it also has encouraged enormous increases in the amounts of materials used around
the world.
There are several other features of markets and prices for many materials that do not
encourage sustainable materials management:
Prices for materials often do not adequately reflect “externalities” such as environmental
damages incurred along the life cycle, leading to more consumption and greater
environmental damages than would have otherwise occurred.
Markets often deal poorly with intergenerational equity, and thus do not encourage
sustainability.
As historical patterns and the recent rise and fall of prices for oil and many materials
illustrate, prices are frequently not a good indicator of long-term supplies and scarcities.
Chapter 1 | Page 6
Efficient use of material resources generally has little or nothing to do with toxicity, and
in fact can encourage the use of toxic alternatives.
In theory, environmental and other regulations might be able to address many of these
problems. In practice, however, our regulatory programs have not been designed to deal
adequately with the multitude of decisions that are made along the life cycle of materials,
and unsustainable materials use is often the result. Achieving materials management will
require the full set of public policy tools including economic policies, regulations, information
and partnerships. With the right signals the market should be able to do a better job
of addressing the range of problems that relate to sustainability.
Trends in U.S. Material Consumption and Environmental
Impact
The global trends are echoed by U.S. trends. Material resources used and consumed in the
U.S. have grown from 161 million metric tons in 1900 to 2.8 billion metric tons in 1995—the
equivalent of over 10 tons per person.
15
Of all the materials the U.S. consumed in the past
100 years, more than half were consumed in the last 25 years.
16
Not only is the U.S. consuming more materials, but the types of materials consumed have
changed significantly over time. In 1900, 41% of the materials used in the U.S. were
renewable (e.g., agricultural, fishery, and forestry products); by 1995, only 6% of materials
consumed were from renewable sources. The majority of materials consumed in the U.S.
now are nonrenewable, including metals, minerals, and fossil-fuel derived products.
17
Our
reliance on minerals as fundamental ingredients in the manufactured products used in the
U.S.—including cell phones, flat-screen monitors, paint, and toothpaste—requires more than
25,000 pounds of new nonfuel minerals per capita each year.
18
Correspondingly, the ecological footprint of a U.S. resident is estimated at 9.4 hectares,
more than four times the global biocapacity per capita.
19
This large ecological footprint is
primarily associated with energy production, which in turn is tied to greenhouse gas
emissions.
20
A draft report being developed by EPA estimates that roughly 42% of U.S.
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may be associated with material extraction and
harvesting, and the production, transportation, and disposal of goods in the U.S., in part
due to the energy needs for these processes.
21
(See Box 2.)
Not only are we drawing upon nonrenewable resources and impacting the environment at
an increasing rate, we are also creating more waste. As U.S. consumers have grown to
favor disposable products and convenience goods, waste has increased at all stages of the
material life cycle.
Chapter 1 | Page 7
The most visible waste in the U.S. is
municipal solid waste, of which we generate
over 250 million tons per year. U.S. per
capita generation of municipal solid waste
increased by 42% between 1970 and 2007,
and has now leveled off at approximately 4.6
pounds per person per day.
22
But municipal
solid waste represents only a small fraction of
the total amount of waste generated within
our society. One estimate of the total waste
generated in the U.S. in 1996 is over 23
billion metric tons per year. Most of this
waste is “hidden” from the economy.
23
Far more materials are being moved or
transformed to meet society’s needs than
most people realize. In particular, “hidden”
material flows (i.e., waste) include mining
overburden, earth moving, and erosion, and
account for as much as 75% of the total
materials that industrial economies use.
24
However, because these hidden flows do not
enter the economy as commodities bought or sold, they are not considered part of the
traditional waste stream, and are not accounted for in the gross domestic product. They do,
however, result in environmental degradation such as landscape alteration, loss of soil
structure and fertility, stream flow changes, ecosystem disruption, and toxic impacts to
land, air, and water from direct releases and leaching.
Box 2
MATERIALS AND CLIMATE
Reallocating the U.S. GHG Inventory to a
materials management perspective reveals
that roughly 42% of U.S. emissions are
associated with the provision of materials
and goods, including emissions from:
• Industrial sectors (direct emissions)
• Electricity used by industrial sectors
• Freight transportation
• Waste and waste management
• Agricultural sources
• Consumption of fuels and electricity in
food processing
• Leaks from refrigeration
• Transportation of food-related products
• Industrial wastewater treatment by
food processing facilities.
(a)
Global and U.S. Trends: Looking Ahead
Commenting on the effects of material resource use on the environment, the heads of major
research institutes in the United States, Germany, Japan, Austria, and the Netherlands have
noted that they expect that between 2000 and 2050, world population will grow
50%, global economic activity will grow 500%, and global energy and materials
use will grow 300%. The world has been and is likely to continue experiencing
unprecedented growth in global economic output, human population, and demands on air,
land, water, and other resources. Reflecting on these trends, these same research leaders
have stated that “unless economic growth can be dramatically decoupled from
resource use and waste generation, environmental pressures will increase
rapidly.”
25
While developed countries place more pressure on the environment than developing nations
on a per capita and total basis today, this pattern is rapidly changing. (See Box 3.) The
World Wildlife Federation has observed that “China is now on parity with the U.S. in terms
Chapter 1 | Page 8
Box 3
US MATERIALS CONSUMPTION
Between 1970 and 1995, the U.S.
represented about one- third of the world’s
total material consumption.
(b)
With less than 5% of the world’s
population, the U.S. consumes:
(c)
• 33% of paper
• 25% of oil
• 15% of coal
• 17% of aluminum
• 15% of copper
of its pressure on the world’s resources” as
measured by ecological footprint.
26
As
developing nations continue to industrialize
and increase their material consumption,
resource demands will only increase.
Through globalization, all countries are
becoming increasingly reliant on imports. This
shift has several important environmental
consequences:
It creates a disconnect between the
environmental impacts of extraction, and
production; these impacts are easy for the
users of products and services to ignore
when they take place far away.
The environmental impacts of extraction
and production can be higher than they might otherwise be if the exporting country has
lower environmental safeguards than the importing country.
Shipping goods long distances increases the impacts on the environment, including
greenhouse gas emissions.
The world has not recently faced significant disruptive crises in the supply of materials,
largely because new discoveries, substitutes, and technologies have averted or delayed
predictions of shortages. Still, the international competition for some of the most abundant
supplies is intense. The prospect for supply crises with certain key materials increases each
year. It is not hard to imagine that if current and projected material consumption trends
continue, we will face scarcity and depletion crises and leave far less resources than we
have now for future generations.
27
However, the most pressing materials issue we face is
the capacity of the Earth—the air, the water, and the land—to withstand the many types of
environmental problems caused by our current patterns and rates of resource use.
These trends make the shift to sustainable materials management critical. The U.S. can lead
the way in this effort. There is the potential not just to recover our own economy and
environment, but also to assist developing nations in bypassing the less efficient practices of
our history and achieving sustainable materials management. Without this leadership, we
face increasing environmental deterioration and economic disruption. (See Box 4.)
Chapter 1 | Page 9
Box 4
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS
The international community is moving quickly towards life-cycle materials management. Many of
the ideas and recommendations in this report reflect major points in two international agreements
endorsed by the United States in 2008.
In the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Council Recommendation
on Resource Productivity (28 March 2008), OECD members agreed to:
• Strengthen their national capacity to measure and analyze material flows in ways that are
internationally compatible;
• Develop and use indicators that assess the efficiency of material resource use;
• Take appropriate actions to improve resource productivity and reduce negative environmental
impacts of materials and product use by promoting integrated life-cycle approaches, setting
targets where appropriate, promoting new technologies, and sharing best practices;
• Work with relevant departments of government and organizations outside of government to
this end; and
• Assist non-member countries to this end.
(d)
The “Kobe 3R [Reduce, Reuse, Recycle] Action Plan” stresses that Group of Eight (G8) countries
should:
• Give high priority to 3Rs policies, including the option of setting appropriate targets,
• Work together to encourage 3Rs on a global scale, through sharing of information and reducing
regulatory and trade barriers that impede this goal, and collaborate to promote 3Rs capacity in
developing countries.
The plan highlights were included in the G8 Summit Leaders Declaration in July 2008.
(e)(f)
Leading the U.S. to a More Sustainable Future: Materials
Management
Materials management is a conceptual framework for systematically addressing the
movement of materials through the economy and the environment from extraction to end of
life. Figure 3 shows the complex interaction between the ecological, industrial, and societal
systems supporting material use. Ecological systems provide the raw material inputs that
drive industrial systems, or may be consumed directly by societal systems. Industrial and
societal systems generate waste that can be recovered for beneficial use or disposed. As
shown in Figure 3, there are many connections between components of the material life
cycle, and therefore, many potential points for policy intervention.
Chapter 1 | Page 10
Natural
Resource
Policies
Product Life
Cycle Policies
Waste
Management
Policies
Industrial Systems
Product/Service
Supply Chains
Energy Production
Ecological Systems
Renewable Resource
Stocks
Non?renewable
Resource Stocks
Finite Media
Energy Sources
Societal Systems
Energy Use
Service Use
Durable Product
Use
Consumable Product
Use
Material
Harvesting
Demand
Fulfillment
Waste Material
Disposal or Recovery
Direct
Utilization
Figure 3: Framework for Examining Materials Management
Source: Fiksel, Joseph. "A Framework for Sustainable Materials Management," Journal of Materials, August 2006
The concept of materials management is fundamental to reducing our environmental
footprint and assuring that we have adequate resources to meet today’s needs and
those of the future. The Workgroup developed the following definition of materials
management, drawing from definitions used by other groups in the U.S. and abroad:
Materials management is an approach to serving human needs by
using/reusing resources most productively and sustainably throughout their
life cycles, generally minimizing the amount of materials involved and all the
associated environmental impacts.
In this context, the Workgroup has followed the lead of many international organizations
and defines materials to include everything that is extracted or derived from natural
resources, which may be either inorganic or organic, at all points throughout their life
cycles. We consider water and air as resources, but do not include them in our definition
of materials, except as they become incorporated into a product. However, materials
use does have direct impacts on air and water quality and scarcity.
Chapter 1 | Page 11
By considering the impacts throughout the entire life cycle, materials
management works to reduce environmental impacts, both (1) directly at each
stage and (2) indirectly at multiple stages by reducing the amounts of
materials used, and thus reducing system-wide environmental impacts. Some of
the means by which this can happen are shown in Figure 4. For instance, industrial and
product design can reduce impacts throughout the system.
Transportation
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Emissions to Air, Water, and Land
Renew Remanufacture Recycle Reuse Composting
Resource
Ext ract ion
Mat erial
Processing
Product
Design and
Manuf act uring
Disposal Collect ion/
Processing
Product
Use
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
A B C D E F
Key: Approaches to Reduce Environmental Impacts in Individual Stages
A?C Material substitution, replacing toxic or hazardous materials with benign ones (detoxification)
A?C Cleaner technologies, reducing the toxic or hazardous properties of waste streams
A?C Redesign industrial processes to reduce toxic pollution and waste
A?F Reduction of GHG emissions associated with fossil fuel combustion and disposal
A?D Material regulation, restricting the use specified materials
D?E Recovery and beneficial recycling of post?industrial or post?consumer waste (Product Stewardship)
F Waste modification through chemical or biological treatment
F Waste containment or isolation to prevent human and ecological exposure
F In?situ waste treatment
Key: Approaches to Reduce Systemwide Material Use
A Extract less raw materials; extract only what is needed
A Prioritize the use of renewable materials and those that can be used in closed loop systems
A?F Increase in the material efficiency in the supply chain (zero?waste, dematerialization, industrial ecology)
A?F Industrial and product redesign to reduce mass, material use, packaging, life?cycle energy requirement, and toxicity
A?F Reduction of transport in the supply chain, thus reducing fuel and vehicle use
D?F Consume products that are less material?intensive, made with recyclable components, and more durable
C?D Substitution of electronic services for material intensive services
C?D Substitution of services for products
F Only biodegradable materials are disposed and returned to the Earth
A?F Consider the function of the product and whether it can be provided in a different manner
Note, Each of these approaches can be encouraged by a variety of “tools,” such as regulations, economic incentives,
information, collaboration, and so forth.
Figure 4: Materials Management Approaches
Source: State/EPA 2020 Vision Workgroup
Chapter 1 | Page 12
Materials management encourages reduction in the amount of material extracted, and
selection of renewable materials over non-renewable resources, where appropriate.
Materials management also encourages changes in product design to use less material,
reduce toxicity, and make products more reusable and/or recyclable. From the consumer
perspective, materials management encourages consumption of products and services
with the least environmental impact.
In a system that recognizes the true value of materials, and accounts for all the
environmental impacts associated with materials use, the concept of waste is
significantly changed. Products and materials presently viewed as acceptable to throw
away will increasingly be recognized as valuable. Materials that used to “go to waste”
will be reused or become feedstocks for new products and processes. Biodegradable
materials that are not reused will be returned to the Earth to renew natural systems.
Over time, as products and processes and ways of using things change, materials will
begin to move in abundant sustainable cycles that nourish rather than deplete the Earth.
Different materials will require different management strategies. For example, the most
important focus for non-renewable materials such as metals often will be to get the most
use and reuse from each finite unit of the resource, while the focus for renewables such
as wood and forest products has to include protection for the natural ecosystems that
produce the resource.
28
Attention to materials use efficiency and recovery will accelerate as concerns over
climate results in new mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is likely that
new laws to address climate change will raise the cost of carbon-based energy, driving
more efficient use of materials and favoring less energy-intensive materials. Incentives
to conserve water in industrial settings are also likely to encourage more material
conservation.
Some organizations and businesses already are making great strides in improving their
economic bottom line and materials management processes. (See Box 5.)
How Does Materials Management Differ From Current
Approaches?
Our current environmental regulatory system focuses largely on controlling “end-of-pipe”
emissions—direct releases to air (e.g., from smokestacks or car tailpipes), water (e.g.,
effluent from factories or water treatment), and the land (e.g., landfill disposal). This
system has and will continue to prevent or alleviate some important environmental impacts.
However, because we do not systematically address materials movement through our
economy and the environment (looking at the whole life cycle), we end up missing some
impacts and/or inadvertently shifting environmental impacts from one medium to another.
Chapter 1 | Page 13
These missed opportunities and undesired shifts leave us ill-equipped to address the
pressures that will come with increases in population, economic activity and materials use.
Box 5
MOVING TO MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
An increasing number of industries and individual companies are taking a life-cycle view of their
materials and processes, with the goal of reducing their environmental footprint, identifying greater
efficiencies, stimulating technical advances, and making themselves more sustainable and
competitive. Three examples are as follows:
• The metals industry, under the leadership of the International Council on Mining and Metals,
has developed a Materials Stewardship Strategy, which aims to supply metals responsibly and
to supervise materials flows so as to maximize societal value and minimize impact on human
health and the environment. As part of this effort, the metals industry is starting to develop a
better understanding of the full life-cycle of minerals and metal products. It is building and
strengthening relationships with actors along the value chain (including commodity
associations, fabricators, product manufacturers, scrap sellers, and recyclers). In addition, this
project is making efforts to optimize the production and application of metals.
(g)
• Ten cement companies are participating in a World Business Council for Sustainable
Development-sponsored sustainability initiative for cement and concrete. One
recommendation of this effort is that all old concrete should be used to make new concrete, or
as aggregate for road construction, working toward a goal of recycling all demolition concrete.
Work is also underway to reduce the carbon footprint of cement by using clinker substitutes,
alternative fuels and raw materials, and improving energy efficiency.
(h)
• The Keystone Center is facilitating discussions by a collaborative stakeholder group (consisting
of producers, agribusinesses, food and retail companies, and conservation organizations) to
develop a supply-chain system for encouraging sustainable agriculture. One of the first tasks
of this group has been to develop metrics to measure the environmental, health, and socio-
economic outcomes of agriculture in the U.S. These metrics will be used to create a
Sustainability Index to help quantify and identify key impacts and trends over time, encourage
industry-wide dialogue and goal-setting, and assist in continued progress on the path to
sustainability over time.
(i)
Even if our current regulatory framework operated perfectly, it was not designed with
sustainability in mind and would not bring us to this point. This is a major challenge for
EPA, state, tribal, and local governments, along with the governments of other nations. We
need to identify new approaches and better integrate currently separate programs, to
address how we extract materials and design, manufacture, use and deal with products at
end-of-life. We need to do this not only for our environmental well-being, but also to
maintain our competitiveness in the global market place. Increasingly, other nations are
demanding more sustainable uses of materials and chemicals. U.S. industry needs to be
equipped to meet these demands or it will fall behind competitively.
Materials management is different from current waste management approaches in several
important ways:
Chapter 1 | Page 14
Materials management seeks the most productive use of resources, while waste
management seeks to minimize and/or manage wastes or pollutants.
Materials management focuses broadly on impacts and policies relating to all the life-
cycle stages of a material or product—including such upstream considerations as using
less material, using less environmentally intensive materials, or making products more
durable, as well as downstream solutions such as reuse and recycling. Waste
management usually focuses only on what to do with wastes once they are generated.
Materials management is concerned with inputs and outputs from/to the environment,
including use of materials, energy and water, plus multiple environmental impacts; it is
not geographically constrained. Waste management is concerned mainly with outputs to
the environment (air, water, land) and usually only those from waste and only where the
waste is managed.
The goal of materials management is overall long-term system sustainability, while the
goal of waste management is often focused on managing a single set of environmental
impacts.
Materials management counts as responsible parties all those who are involved in the
life cycle of a material or product, including industry and consumers. In contrast, waste
management usually counts as responsible parties only those who generate waste.
Materials management therefore casts a far broader net than waste and chemicals
management has traditionally done. It seeks to address and reduce the life-cycle
environmental impacts from the making and consumption of materials and products and
applies a systems-wide perspective in doing so. While there are a number of existing EPA
and state programs that are helping to move the U.S. toward a more material-efficient
society, there is no single strategy at the Federal level in the U.S. that collectively looks at
all environmental impacts of materials and products throughout their life cycles. Regulations
and economic instruments seek to prevent or mitigate certain impacts, but they rarely take
sufficient account of upstream or downstream effects.
Seen this way, materials management is a very broad concept. It overlaps and supplements
many other concepts that are being adopted by governments, businesses and others. (See
Box 6.)
Solid waste programs at EPA and in most states tend to address waste in two ways: (1)
by regulations governing waste identification, management, disposal and cleanup; and (2)
by collaborations to encourage waste minimization, greater recycling, use of more recycled
content, and identification of beneficial uses for materials that would otherwise be thrown
away. In recent years, waste programs also have begun to address toxic chemicals
reduction. For instance, the National Program for Environmental Priorities (NPEP) focuses
on toxic chemical content in processes, products and intermediaries. However, the majority
of waste programs’ efforts have not focused on reducing the use of materials or the toxicity
Chapter 1 | Page 15
of products or manufacturing processes,
working with manufacturers to make sure
that materials and products are more easily
reused or recycled at end of life. Only by
further shifting our focus away from end-of-
life management towards solutions that
address the root cause of waste can we begin
to conserve resources and ensure that
materials have high-v
or
alue end markets when
e products containing them reach the end
kaging
n
are in an ideal position of
ptimizing a package for its entire life cycle.
e
ent
s
ed
al
and
r life cycles. Some
states are moving in this direction. (See Box
7.)
th
of their useful lives.
EPA’s work with the Sustainable Pac
Coalition (SPC), an NGO, provides an
example of how lifecycle materials
management approaches are being applied
today. EPA has supported the SPC’s efforts i
creating a comprehensive set of resources for
design of more sustainable packaging – the
Design Guidelines for Sustainable Packaging
and the COMPASS design tool. As the design
of packaging influences the entire packaging
supply chain, designers who understand the
flow of materials
o
(See Figure 5.)
EPA’s chemical programs have made progress in recent years towards adopting life-cycle
materials management. Efforts that address choices made early in the life cycle, such as th
Green Chemistry, Green Engineering, Pollution Prevention and Design for the Environm
Programs, form a good foundation on which to build. However, the more “traditional” part
of the programs remain largely focused on
reducing or eliminating the use of individual
chemicals, or classes of chemicals in certain
products or processes that may pose
potential risks—often by using inform
substitution to move toward safer chemic
substitutes. To move more aggressively
toward the broader goal of sustainability,
more effort needs to be made to identify
address the full range of environmental
impacts associated with materials and
products throughout thei
Box 6
MATERIALS MANAGEMENT AND
RELATED CONCEPTS
Materials management is a very broad
concept. It overlaps and supplements
many other concepts being adopted by
government, business and others including,
but not limited to:
• Sustainable Materials Management
(OECD)
• Sustainable Production and
Consumption (UNEP)
• Sustainable Resource Management
(UNEP)
• 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (G8)
• Sound Materials Society (Japan)
• Design for the Environment (EPA and
others)
• Green Chemistry
• Lean Manufacturing
• Sustainable Supply-Chain Management
• Eco-labeling
• Green Procurement
• Zero Waste
Box 7
STATES’ PROGRESS TOWARDS
MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
A number of states have ambitious
programs to move towards materials
management. One example is California’s
green chemistry program which requires
that the State identify chemicals of concern,
evaluate alternatives, and specify
regulatory responses where chemicals of
concern are found in products. Washington
and Maine have similar programs.
Chapter 1 | Page 16
With the SPC, EPA is
providing input on the
design of a label to inform
consumers about end?of?life
options.
EPA's National Vehicle and Fuel
Emissions Laboratory assists with transportation
issues associated with weight reduction and shape
reconfiguration.
EPA works with material manufacturers and
converters to reduce the environmental
impact of polymers and coatings.
EPA's Design for the
Environment program
assists with environmentally
preferable product
reformulation.
Product
Design and
Manufacture
Distribution
and Retail
Purchase
and Use
End of Life
Recovery
Material
Processing
EPA's Climate
Leaders and Green
Suppliers Network
programs assist
manufacturers with
reducing their GHG
and environmental
footprint.
To encourage end?
of?life recovery, the
Sustainable Packaging
Coalition (SPC) and the
CA Department of
Conservation are
working to improve:
recovery metrics,
information on
recovery technologies,
and consumer
communications.
EPA helped Wal?Mart
develop their packaging
scorecard which is serving as
a catalyst in redesigning
packaging resulting in source
reduction and reduced
transportation.
Resource
Extraction
Figure 5: Example of a Life-cycle Materials Management Approach for Packaging
Adapted from “Design Guidelines for Sustainable Packaging,” Sustainable Packaging Coalition, GreenBlue, 2006
Independent efforts to address the issues of climate change, energy conservation, and
water conservation miss opportunities for achieving maximum environmental impact,
because they do not also consider broader approaches to managing materials more
sustainably. Because materials have such a large impact on a wide variety of environmental
issues, integrated materials management approaches will yield significant benefits while
achieving more efficient resource use and cost savings.
A comprehensive materials management approach serves to direct environmental, product,
and resource policy to those areas where it will provide the greatest environmental benefit.
It will enable us to focus on those material flows which potentially cause the greatest harm
and where in the life cycle they occur. It also will allow us to determine which material flows
are overly wasteful, where they originate, and where they ultimately end up. It will also
help identify which activities or products are primarily responsible for these harmful flows,
and devise strategies that have the greatest likelihood of being environmentally and
economically effective.
Chapter 1 | Page 17
Chapter 2:
Building an Analytic Framework
While considering the idea of a comprehensive
materials management approach, the Vision
Workgroup recognized the importance of
identifying priorities and conducting a few well-
chosen demonstration projects to show the
value of this approach and gain greater insights
on integrating policies and programs around
materials management. The Workgroup also
recognized that any comprehensive materials
management strategy should build on an
analytical framework that accounts for the fact
that a few hundred raw materials are extracted or harvested from the environment and
subsequently transformed into thousands of final products by a highly complex and
intertwined system. As noted earlier, numerous environmental impacts arise as a
consequence of how this system of materials and products currently operates.
Developing the Framework
To formulate a materials management analytical framework, the Workgroup built on the
experiences of other organizations and initiatives. The Workgroup reviewed the efforts of
the European Commission, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
and other nations, seeking to prioritize materials, products or wastes. This body of
knowledge suggested the need to understand the life-cycle impacts of materials in order to
construct more interlocking and effective materials management policies. For example, the
European Commission (EC) conducted its Environmental Impacts of Products (EIPRO) study
to identify products which potentially cause the greatest life-cycle environmental impacts
across eight environmental impact categories such as global warming potential and human
toxicity. The EC is identifying ways to reduce life-cycle impacts and develop appropriate
policy measures to achieve reductions.
29
Evaluating the life-cycle environmental impacts of material use is important and can identify
which materials have the greatest overall potential impacts to humans and the
environment. However, the Workgroup felt it was important to go beyond environmental
impacts and to include resource use (materials, water, and energy) and material waste.
Examining all these aspects from a life-cycle perspective enables strategic targeting of
Chapter 2 | Page 18
policies to promote more efficient use of materials and reduce environmental impacts across
all stages of the material system.
Another important consideration when developing materials management strategies is
viewing the environmental aspects from more than one perspective across the material
system. As a point of comparison, the EIPRO study assessed the life-cycle impacts of
products consumed by households (often termed final consumption.) This meant all of the
impacts from all stages, from extraction of the raw materials through end-of-life, are
“passed on” and embedded in the final product sold to a household. This perspective
reveals final products that are familiar to consumers and that have the greatest life-cycle
impacts.
However, using a final consumption perspective may hide significant impacts of upstream
material stages, especially when the outputs of those stages become widely dispersed
across a large number of different final products. Each of those final products will have
separate material composition profiles and life cycles. For example, copper mining
potentially contributes significantly to environmental and human health impacts, uses a fair
amount of energy, water, and material, and produces quite a bit of waste. Using a product
or final consumption perspective, these potential impacts would be dispersed among the
thousands of products in which copper is used, such as currency, batteries, circuits,
industrial components, telecommunications equipment, roofing, household items, piping,
and a wide variety of electronic products. The life-cycle impacts associated with creating
those products would be captured, including the impacts of copper mining, but because
copper comprises such a small portion of the individual products, the impacts of copper
mining as a whole would be hidden.
Thus, it is important to include perspectives that can reveal environmentally problematic
upstream stages such as extraction (e.g., copper ore) or initial material processing (e.g.,
smelting) and middle stages such as manufacturing, as well as the final product. Evaluating
a material system through more than one perspective can yield dramatically different
results and better inform a materials management strategy.
In summary, the Workgroup identified the following components as integral in establishing
an analytical framework for materials management strategies:
Establishing the universe: Use the most complete dataset of materials, products, and
services whose relationships in an economy are well mapped.
Understanding all impacts, inputs, and outputs: Include the full range of
environmental aspects including environmental impacts, resource use (material, energy,
and water) and material waste. For environmental impacts, cover as many
environmental and human health impacts as possible.
Using perspectives to understand where the impacts are occurring: View the
material system from different perspectives to ensure impacts are fully revealed.
Chapter 2 | Page 19
Applying the Framework to the U.S. Economy
In applying this framework to identify potential candidates for demonstration projects, the
Workgroup created an approach using existing tools and data to produce a relative ranking
of the materials, products and services consumed in the US economy. The methodology
developed is based on the components identified above and is described in detail in the
Appendix (a separate document).
The universe established for this analysis was the 480 materials, products and services
included in the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) 1998 input/output (I/O) tables
(most recent year available when analysis done). These 480 materials, products and
services span all stages of the material system from extraction such as copper ore to final
consumption of products or provision of services such as jewelry or hospitals. The I/O
tables map the relationships of these materials, products and services to one another in the
U.S. economy. Also, the primary data source used in the analysis was the Comprehensive
Environmental Data Archive (CEDA 3.0) which uses the BEA I/O tables as its baseline list of
materials, products and services. The CEDA 3.0 tool was used in the EIPRO study and
enhanced to incorporate end-of-life.
For the environmental impacts and inputs and outputs, the Workgroup considered
thirteen environmental impacts included in CEDA: abiotic depletion, land use, global
warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic toxicity, marine aquatic
toxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, freshwater sedimental ecotoxicity, marine sedimental
ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidation, acidification, and eutrophication. Further, material,
energy and water use and material waste were included. These became the 17 criteria on
which the 480 materials, products and services were relatively ranked. Although it may
appear that there are some redundancies among the 17 criteria, they each address an
important consideration in priority setting.
While CEDA was equipped to assess environmental impacts and energy use, it did not have
the ability to assess material and water use, or material waste disposed. Data for these
came from the World Resources Institute’s Material Flows Analysis database (material use
and waste) and the U.S. Geological Survey (water use). However, these data were
compiled using different classification schemes which meant that extensive cross-walking to
the BEA classification scheme was required. The Workgroup used innovative techniques for
allocating those data into the BEA’s list of 480 materials, products, and services. For
example, a WRI material may have had a direct relationship with a material in BEA’s lists
(e.g., WRI coal to BEA coal). In other cases, a WRI material was related to a number of
different products (e.g., WRI grain to a number of BEA commodities such as bread, meat
animals, etc).
Finally, the Workgroup examined the 480 materials, products and services from three
different perspectives referred to as “direct impact/resource use/waste,” “intermediate
consumption,” and “final consumption.” (See Figure 6.)
Chapter 2 | Page 20
D
D
D
D D
D
D
D
D
D+I
D+I
D+I?O
D+I?O
D+I?O
D
i
r
e
c
t
I
m
p
a
c
t
s
/
U
s
e
/
W
a
s
t
e
I
n
t
e
r
m
e
d
i
a
t
e
C
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
F
i
n
a
l
C
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
D
D
D
D+I
D+I
D+I
D =direct impact, use, or waste I =impact, use, or waste associated with inputs O =impact, use, or waste associated with outputs
D+I?O
D+I?O
D+I?O
D+I?O
D+I?O
• Measures direct environmental impacts, material, water and
energy use, and waste disposed at each point in the supply
chain; does not include embedded environmental impacts,
material, water, or energy use, or waste disposed.
• More likely than the other perspectives to highlight raw
materials and intermediate products at early stages in the
supply chain before outputs are widely dispersed throughout
the economy (e.g., copper) and there is little use as a final
product.
• Measures accumulated (direct and embedded) environmental
impacts, material, water and energy use, and waste disposed
at each point in the supply chain before they are “passed on”
to the next stage.
• This perspective allows transparent consideration of the
accumulated impacts, resource use, and waste associated with
intermediate products and processes before these aspects are
“passed on” to products consumed by final consumers
• Measures embedded environmental impacts, material, water
and energy use, and waste associated with final products;
traditional LCA approach.
• This perspective reveals the overall impacts associated with
final consumption.
Figure 6: U.S. Supply Chain Perspectives
The direct impact/resource use/waste disposed perspective examines what environmental
impacts, resource use and waste are occurring at each life-cycle stage of a material system;
nothing is embedded from other stages. This perspective potentially reveals where in a
material or product life cycle the greatest direct impacts occur (and those over which a
facility has direct control). Upstream stages such as extraction and harvesting are likely to
be revealed.
The intermediate consumption perspective examines all the accumulated life-cycle impacts
at each life-cycle stage before they are embedded and passed on to the next stage. This
perspective reveals where in a material system the greatest accumulated impacts, resource
use and waste occur, and is likely to reveal upstream activities (e.g., material processing
and manufacturing) and intermediate products.
The final consumption perspective “passes on” and embeds all impacts from across the
material system in the final products consumed. For this analysis, final consumers were
defined as both households and government. This perspective reveals which materials,
products and services consumed by households and government have the greatest life-cycle
impacts, resource use and waste.
Chapter 2 | Page 21
Once all the results were obtained, an applied vector analysis approach was used to produce
a relative ranking of the 480 materials, products and services in each of the three supply
chain perspectives.
It is important to recognize that the results produced by this analysis are not direct
measures of impacts or risk, but rather provide a relative ranking of materials, products,
and services potentially contributing significantly to environmental issues. Also, the 480
materials, products and services represent commodity groupings and thus the results
cannot be interpreted to single out any individual company or specific product as particularly
resource-intensive, wasteful or environmentally damaging.
Recognizing the complexities of the analysis, the Workgroup had it peer reviewed by
independent experts. The peer reviewers found the overall approach and results produced a
reasonable starting point for identifying materials, products, and services on which to focus.
They also provided several recommendations for improving the analysis. The Workgroup
followed-up on some of these recommendations.
What We Found
Table 1 presents the results of the Workgroup’s analysis of the U.S. consumptive economy.
The table is a compilation of the top 20 highest ranked materials, products and services
from each system perspective when ranked across all criteria. This process identified 37
materials, products and services. Just under half of the 37 ranked within the top 20 in only
one or two system perspectives. Because the analysis was conducted using 1998 data, we
conducted an analysis of significant market trends between 1998 and the present to
determine whether any adjustments should be made to the overall results. As a result,
“Computer and Data Processing Services” was added due to its profound growth.
Therefore, Table 1 contains a total of 38 materials, products and services.
The table presents the individual materials, products and services grouped into seven broad
categories: construction and development, food products and services, forestry, metals,
nonrenewable organics, textiles, and other products and services. They are grouped in a
manner to depict crude direct relationships (e.g., feed grains, meat animals, meat packing
plants, eating and drinking places). For each material, product and service, the table shows
the final rank for each perspective, as well as the environmental aspects contributing
significantly to its high ranking.
All of the 17 criteria proved important to the ranking outcomes, although certain criteria
tended to contribute more significantly to high rankings than others.
To demonstrate the merits of including all the criteria, a comparative examination of
rankings was performed to observe changes as more criteria groups were added. This was
done using the final consumption perspective. For example, results for a single criterion,
global warming, were compared to the results when all environmental impact criteria were
used, and then to the results when all seventeen criteria were used. For global warming, air
Chapter 2 | Page 22
transportation and meat packing plants ranked high and were close in terms of their
potential life-cycle global warming impacts. Addressing either from a life-cycle perspective
would achieve important GHG reductions. However, when the remaining environmental
impact criteria are included, the rank of meat packing plants rose significantly while air
transportation fell. When the resource use and material waste criteria are added, meat
packing plants maintained their high ranking position and air transportation rose, but
remained significantly lower than meat packing plants. Thus, if meat packing plants are
addressed from a life-cycle perspective, significant benefits potentially could be realized
related to land use, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidation, terrestrial
ecotoxicity and eutrophication, in addition to global warming. Addressing air transportation,
on the other hand, potentially offers only energy use and global warming benefits.
The table also demonstrates the importance of using several perspectives. Different
materials, products and services rank high depending on which perspective is used and
these materials, product and services generally fall within different life-cycle stages.
Extraction and harvesting tend to rank high under the direct impact/resource use/waste
perspective, while finished goods and services rank high under the final consumption
perspective. The intermediate consumption perspective tends to rank high in the material
processing and manufacturing stages, and less likely to rank high in services. Each
perspective highlights potentially significant problematic materials, products, or services
that the other perspectives missed.
The Workgroup was also interested in looking at the results related specifically to
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from all 3 perspectives. The results showed that when
looking at direct GHG emissions, the upstream stages were highly ranked – for example,
feed grains, and blast furnaces/steel mills. However, when looking at embedded GHG
emissions, the downstream stages are highly ranked such as hospitals, meat packing plants,
and automotive repair shops and services.
Conclusion
The Workgroup believes that this examination of the 480 materials, products, and services
across seventeen environmental criteria and from three different material system
perspectives provides a reasonable narrowing of the economy to identify a pool of potential
candidate materials, products and services which are important enough to be considered for
projects to demonstrate the value of using life-cycle materials management. However, the
Workgroup recognizes that an analysis such as this gives rise to many limitations and
uncertainties such as correlations between criteria, the difference in level of commodity
aggregation that exists for 480 materials, products and services examined, and the varying
quality levels of the data used. Nevertheless, the 38 materials, products and services
identified in Table 1 are likely to represent significant contributors to environmental issues
in the U.S.
Chapter 2 | Page 23
Chapter 2 | Page 24
This life-cycle analysis of the U.S. economy provides a rough sense of what impacts are
occurring, where they are occurring, and what demands are behind them through its rather
complete set of criteria and perspectives, limitations and uncertainties notwithstanding.
This analysis also enables us to select demonstration projects that focus on particular types
of materials management challenges. These challenges can include trying to address
materials that become highly dispersed in the economy (e.g., aluminum); products or
services that are a convergence of highly dispersed upstream materials (e.g., electronics,
hospitals); or materials from each type of raw material category (e.g., agriculture, metals
and minerals, nonrenewable organics). Each of these cases would have very different
cycling pathways through the economy, from almost circular such as metals to essentially
linear such as food. In addition, the process for selecting the demonstration projects can
take advantage of the crude “supply chain” relationships that can be observed in Table 1
(e.g., feed grains, meat animals, meat packing plants, and meat consumers).
Regardless of how projects are selected, they should be designed to address the entire
materials system. The analysis can serve as an initial guide on which impacts need to be
addressed, where they are in the supply chain, and which parties should participate in
crafting a materials management strategy.
Beyond identifying demonstration projects, this analysis may offer interesting insights on
the value of present program activities, as well as any priority-setting endeavors around a
particular environmental impact such as GHG emissions. The analysis performed for this
report can serve well as a model for environmental analysis in the future.
Table 1: Summary of Top-Ranked Materials, Products, and Services
Final Rank Environmental Aspects Significantly
(1)
Contributing to Final Rank
Material, Product, or Service
DI IC FC
Direct Impact/Resource
Use/Waste Perspective
Intermediate Consumption
Perspective
Final Consumption Perspective
Dairy farm products 19 – – LUC
Poultry and eggs 20 – – LUC
Meat animals 6 6 – LUC LUC, FAETP, TETP, EP
Food grains 13 – – LUC, EP
Feed grains 9 15 – LUC, FAETP, TETP, EP, MU ADP, LUC, FAETP, TETP, EP
Miscellaneous crops 16 – – FAETP, TETP, EP
Meat packing plants – 11 7 LUC, FAETP, TETP, EP LUC, FAETP, TETP
Poultry slaughtering and processing – – 17 LUC,
Eating and drinking places – 16 5 LUC, GWP, FAETP, TETP, POCP, EP LUC, GWP, ODP, HTP, FAETP, MAETP, TETP, FSETP, MSETP,
POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW, EU
Food preparations, n.e.c. – – 19 FAETP,TETP,EP
F
o
o
d
P
r
o
d
u
c
t
s
&
S
e
r
v
i
c
e
s
Fluid milk – – 20 LUC
Cotton 2 2 – FAETP, TETP, EP FAETP, TETP, EP
Apparel made from purchased
materials
– 13 2 FAETP, TETP, EP ODP, HTP, FAETP, TETP, MSETP, EP
T
e
x
t
i
l
e
s
Broadwoven fabric mills and fabric
finishing plants
– 10 – FAETP, TETP, EP
Coal 5 9 – ADP, MU, MW ADP, MU, MW
Crude petroleum and natural gas 4 4 – ADP, GWP, POCP ADP, GWP, POCP, AP, EP
Industrial inorganic and organic
chemicals
3 3 – ODP, HTP, MSETP, MW ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, EP, MW
Petroleum refining 8 5 3 MU, MW ADP, GWP, POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW ADP, GWP, ODP, POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW
Electric services (utilities) 1 1 1 GWP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP, POCP,
AP, EP, WU, EU
ADP, GWP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP,
POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW, WU, EU
ADP, GWP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP, POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW,
WU, EU
N
o
n
r
e
n
e
w
a
b
l
e
O
r
g
a
n
i
c
s
Natural gas distribution 15 14 12 MU, MW ADP, MU, MW ADP, MW
Blast furnaces and steel mills – 17 – GWP, HTP, POCP, MW, EU
Primary aluminum 18 20 – ODP, HTP, MAETP, FSEPT, MSEPT ODP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP, MSETP
M
e
t
a
l
s
Motor vehicles and passenger car
bodies
– 12 4 GWP, ODP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP,
MSETP, POCP, EP, EU
ADP, GWP, ODP, HTP, FAETP, MAETP, TETP, FSETP, MSETP,
POCP, AP, EP, MW, EU
Chapter 2 | Page 25
Chapter 2 | Page 26
Final Rank Environmental Aspects Significantly
(1)
Contributing to Final Rank
Material, Product, or Service
DI IC FC
Direct Impact/Resource
Use/Waste Perspective
Intermediate Consumption
Perspective
Final Consumption Perspective
Dimension, crushed and broken stone 14 – – MU
Sand and gravel 17 – – MU
New residential 1 unit structures,
nonfarm
10 8 8 MU BWP, ODP, HTP, FSETP, MSETP,
POCP, MU
GWP, ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, EP, MU, MW
Other new construction – – 13 GWP, ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, MU
Owner?occupied dwellings – – 11 GWP,OCP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, EP, MU
New highways, bridges, and other
horizontal construction
– – 10 HTP, POCP, MU
C
o
n
s
t
r
u
c
t
i
o
n
&
D
e
v
e
l
o
p
m
e
n
t
New office, industrial and commercial
buildings construction
– – 16 ODP, MTP, MSETP, POCP, MU
Pulp mills 11 – – HTP, MSETP
F
o
r
e
s
t
r
y
Paper and paperboard mills 7 7 – HTP, MSETP HTP, MSETP
Computer and data processing
services: including own?account
software
(2)
_ _ _
Photographic equipment and
supplies
(3)
12 – 14 HTP, MSETP HTP, MSETP
Wholesale trade – 19 15 GWP, ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, EU ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP
Retail trade, except eating and
drinking
– – 6 ADP, GWP, ODP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP, MSETP, POCP, AP, EP,
MU, MW, WU, EU
Hospitals – – 9 GWP, ODP, HTP, TETP, FESTP, MSETP, POCP, EP, MW, EU O
t
h
e
r
P
r
o
d
s
&
S
e
r
v
i
c
e
s
Real estate agents, managers,
operators, and lessors
– 18 18 GWP, HTP, POCP, MU ODP, HTP, POCP, MU
NOTES: (1) Significantly means value greater than two standard deviations from the mean.
(2) The supplemental markets trends analysis suggests that if relative output were adjusted from 1998 to 2007 levels, the “computer and data processing services” category would rank as high as second from the
final consumption perspective. For 1998 levels, it ranks 26th in the final consumption perspective with marine sedimental ecotoxicity being the significantly contributing environmental aspect.
(3) The supplemental market trends analysis suggests that if relative output were adjusted from 1998 to 2007 levels, the “photographic equipment and supplies” category would be ranked below the top 20 from
the final consumption perspective.
KEY:
DI = Direct impact/resource use/waste
IC = Intermediate consumption
FC = Final consumption
• Shading shows the top 10 highest ranks for each perspective.
• ? = ranked below top 20.
Environmental Impacts
ADP = abiotic depletion potential
AP = acidification potential
EP = eutrophication potential
FAETP = freshwater aquatic ecotox. potential
FSETP = freshwater sediment ecotox. potential
GWP = global warming potential
HTP = human toxicity potential
TETP = terrestrial ecotox potential
LUC = land use
MAETP = marine aquatic ecotox. potential
MSETP = marine sediment ecotox potential
ODP = ozone depletion potential
POCP = photochemical oxidation potential
Resource Use and Waste
EU = Energy Used
MU = Materials Used
MW = Material Waste
WU = Water Used
Chapter 3:
Workgroup Recommendations for Achieving Sustainable
Materials Management
The recommendations are an integrated plan that provides a “roadmap” of tasks to promote
materials management within EPA, state and tribal environmental programs. They call for
immediate actions along three parallel paths.
First, we recommend steps that EPA and state environmental agencies can take to
promote integrated materials management, building on current programs including core
regulatory programs.
Second, we recommend that EPA and state environmental agencies move quickly to
enhance their capacity for future life-cycle materials management.
Third, we recommend accelerating an active, multifaceted conversation on life-cycle
materials management with other parts of the federal government, state government,
industry, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the public.
Along these three paths, several cross-cutting themes underlie a national movement
towards sustainable materials management.
Government itself does not manage most materials, but its collective actions can have a
strong impact on how materials are managed throughout the economy.
EPA, state, tribal, and local environmental programs need to align and integrate their
approaches, where possible, to move beyond existing program and product “silos.”
Government agencies at all levels need to work together to use a variety of regulatory,
economic, information and collaboration tools to accomplish the shift to materials
management.
Government environmental agencies need to engage across administrative, geographical,
governmental and stakeholder boundaries to develop effective materials management
strategies. These engagements are particularly needed to achieve changes early in the life-
cycle of materials.
The recommendations focus on materials management in the year 2020—eleven years from
now. This time frame is intended to emphasize that the changes described in this report
will take longer than a few years to achieve. But it is possible—and necessary—to begin
now.
Chapter 3 | Page 27
RECOMMENDATION 1:
Promote efforts to manage materials and products on a
life-cycle basis.
1.1 Select a few materials/products
for an integrated life-cycle
approach, and launch
demonstration projects.
Working with the Environmental Council of the
States (ECOS), the Association of State and
Territorial Solid Waste Management Officials
(ASTSWMO), and other groups as appropriate,
EPA should select a few materials and/or
products where an integrated life-cycle
materials management approach could
possibly achieve significant benefits for the
environment and reduce resource use. The
selection should be based on the analysis
described in Chapter 2/Table 1 of the top
ranked materials/products and on expressions
of interest and likely collaboration by
potentially affected stakeholders and key
decision makers.
Box 8
QUESTIONS FOR MATERIAL/PRODUCT
WORKGROUPS TO ADDRESS
1. What are the significant
environmental impacts associated
with this material or product (e.g.,
where in the life cycle do the
impacts occur, what processes drive
these impacts, and what type of
opportunities exist to reduce these
impacts)? Also, are there potential
risks of short or difficult-to-obtain
supplies?
2. What is currently being done to
address the impacts associated with
this material/product?
3. If all impacts are not being
addressed, what more can we do
(e.g., fill information gaps, do more
with less, find substitutes for toxic
inputs, close the loop)?
4. What targets/strategies for
improvement are advised? How
should progress be measured?
Once demonstration projects are selected,
EPA should convene and empower EPA/state
workgroups to develop frameworks to reduce
environmental impacts of the
materials/products throughout the life cycle.
These groups should start by examining
ongoing efforts (in government and/or private
sector) and consider questions such as those
in Box 8 to develop initial frameworks that:
1. strategically address life-cycle impacts
with ambitious targets;
2. integrate existing and new efforts across
environmental media and programs (e.g.,
air, water, toxics, waste);
Chapter 3 | Page 28
3. use a variety of regulatory and non-
regulatory tools; and
Box 9
OPPORTUNITIES FOR WASTE AND
CHEMICALS PROGRAMS
1. Set realistic targets to transition
towards increased use of secondary
materials, reduced material and toxic
intensity, as well as reduced waste,
toxic and physical insults to the
environment.
2. Find ways to prevent key
materials/product streams from
becoming waste in the first place (e.g.,
consider use of RFID tags to improve
the recycling, reuse and refurbishment
of materials in consumer products).
3. Work with the Department of
Commerce—Manufacturing Extension
Partnership to expand lean
manufacturing support to small and
medium enterprises to include
reduction in material throughput and
other aspects of life-cycle materials
management.
4. Encourage the trend that we see among
leading waste management companies
to transform themselves into full-
service life-cycle materials management
advisors and service providers.
5. Initiate energy recovery once reuse,
recycling, and composting have been
performed or are shown to be not
viable.
6. Incorporate life-cycle materials
management principles in all EPA P2
strategy and program guidance
documents that are generated.
Explicitly expand the agency’s concept
of pollution prevention to embrace
system-level life-cycle materials
management, not just source reduction
at the facility level.
4. account for the full cost of products and
waste.
EPA and the states should seek stakeholder
input on the frameworks and work with
interested stakeholders to develop shared
action plans. Action plans should consider
creating multi-stakeholder teams capable of
sustained and adaptive management for the
pilot material or product (e.g., building on the
model of the Quicksilver Caucus for mercury).
They also should share information and
insights with groups that are already working
on those materials/products.
1.2 Expand the focus of existing
environmental programs to
encompass life-cycle materials
management more fully.
EPA should work with states to expand the
focus of the “mainline” environmental
programs, especially the solid and hazardous
waste and chemicals programs, to encompass
the complete life cycle of materials more
fully. At a minimum, EPA and states should
identify specific opportunities to realign,
refocus, or expand their efforts to promote
life-cycle materials management. (See Box
9.) This should include:
Examine regulations to find ways to
reduce barriers to life-cycle material
management and promote resource
efficiency.
Encourage greater recovery and reuse of
critical materials.
Chapter 3 | Page 29
Harness strategic planning, national guidance, budget, and performance metric systems
to facilitate materials management. (See 2.4 below.)
In addition, EPA and the states need to take the Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC) to
the next stage by creating more emphasis on interventions earlier in the material life cycle.
(See Box 10.)
1.3 Promote specific materials management approaches that can help
address climate change.
EPA, state, tribal and local environmental agencies should work to integrate climate change
and life-cycle materials management policies by emphasizing to decision-makers the
connection between GHG emissions and materials. EPA and states also should pursue
strategies that reduce GHG emissions through materials management approaches that
balance GHG with other environmental impacts.
1.4 Promote greener products, product stewardship, and product-to-
service transformations.
EPA should more actively promote the availability of environmentally preferable products by
working to improve product design, reduce impacts associated with product supply chains,
and increase product recovery. EPA and state waste and chemical programs should
significantly expand their efforts to identify and encourage the use of products that are
greener throughout their life cycle. This should include a number of specific efforts, such
as:
Encourage disclosure of all materials included in products.
Work with states, manufacturers, retailers, and institutional buyers to develop EPA-
endorsed life cycle-based, multi-attribute green product labeling standards for multiple
product categories, with emphasis on priority materials/products.
Use Design for the Environment (DfE), Green Chemistry, Green Engineering, and green
product standards/labeling initiatives within EPA waste, chemicals and innovations
programs as drivers for new product design and production technologies, and product
designs that use materials more efficiently.
Work with states, manufacturers, retailers, NGO’s, and others to identify efficient ways
to take back and recover products at end-of-life.
Facilitate “business to business” approaches that promote material reuse, such as
material and waste exchanges, “by-product synergy” and “eco-industrial” relationships.
Chapter 3 | Page 30
Promote business models that transform the sale of products to the sale of services and
help ensure that such business models maximize materials use efficiency and other
environmental improvements.
Box 10
THE RESOURCE CONSERVATION CHALLENGE AND MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
In 2002, EPA launched the Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC). The RCC was an early effort to
respond to the RCRA Vision by placing renewed emphasis on RCRA mandates to prevent pollution, and
conserve natural resources and energy through more efficient materials management.
The RCC currently emphasizes four major resource areas: 1) municipal solid waste reuse and recycling; 2)
green initiatives, such as reducing the life-cycle environmental impacts of electronics, and promoting
green building construction and retrofitting of existing buildings; 3) industrial materials reuse and
recycling; and 4) reduction of toxic chemicals in products and waste.
Most RCC initiatives focus on the beneficial use of post-consumer and post-industrial materials, either by
recycling, composting, or waste-to-energy. Putting to good use materials that would otherwise be disposed
is an important element of a materials management strategy. Indeed, building an understanding of the
value of material wastes and the needed infrastructure for their return to our economy is a necessary first
step towards a materials management transformation.
The RCC also includes some initiatives that point more upstream in the materials and product cycles by
encouraging materials substitution and eco-design of products. For example, the National Partnership for
Environmental Priorities (NPEP)—a partnership between EPA’s waste and chemicals programs—calls on
partners to reduce the use of priority chemicals. The Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool
(EPEAT), another waste and chemicals program partnership, challenges electronics manufacturers to
remove toxics, use recycled content, and to make these products more energy efficient and easier to
recycle or refurbish. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition aims to encourage a sustainable flow of materials
through design guidance and tools to guide the selection of more sustainable materials. The Lifecycle
Building Challenge calls for buildings to be designed for adaptation (so that buildings can be repurposed
rather than torn down and rebuilt) and deconstruction (so building materials can be reused).
A fully-realized materials management strategy will not only address recovery and beneficial use of wastes
in industrial and biological cycles, but will also emphasize powerful upstream efforts to reduce and change
materials use, such as: 1) full recognition of the life-cycle impacts of the use of certain materials; 2) using
less materials in the first place; 3) substituting safer and renewable materials in place of toxic or non-
renewable materials; and 4) substituting services for products (to provide maximum utility with minimal
material inputs and environmental impacts).
This kind of thinking requires us to ask very different questions. For example, we often ask “What should
we do with scrap tires, or electronics, or fluorescent lights when they need to be disposed?” But the
question for the future may need to be: Is there a way to eliminate this waste completely, to provide
these same services with fewer resources and no adverse environmental impacts? Can we do this by
substituting something else that does not wear out so fast, can be reused, that can be fully or almost fully
recovered and repurposed so that it never becomes waste? These kinds of questions, some of which are
already being asked, can really “change the game.” They can generate untold innovation, improve lives,
meet society’s needs without overexploiting resources (renewable or non-renewable), and keep our
economic activity within the absorptive capacity of the environment.
Chapter 3 | Page 31
Work with producers, retailers, the waste collection/recycling industry, recyclers, and
local governments to develop the materials collection and processing infrastructure
needed to support life-cycle materials management.
Improve the amount and type of consumer information available to support green
purchasing.
» Encourage consolidation of green product claims under fewer, more comprehensive
and trusted product labels to reduce consumer confusion and “greenwashing.”
» Review and update government procurement practices at all levels to support life
cycle-based product standards. Consider allowing companies who supply superior
“green” products to advertise that they supply these products to the U.S.
Government.
1.5 Strengthen market signals to reduce waste and other adverse
environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of materials.
Governments at all levels should work with industry and other stakeholders to use market
signals to promote better materials management throughout the life cycle. Possibilities
include:
Charge more for disposal and less for recycling; charge for disposal by amount disposed
(“pay as you throw”).
Charge emissions and permit fees.
Reward citizens/communities that recycle with rebates or coupons (e.g., Recycle Bank).
Limit landfilling and incineration of recyclable/compostable materials.
Chapter 3 | Page 32
RECOMMENDATION 2:
Build capacity and integrate materials management
approaches in existing government programs.
2.1 Establish and improve databases
to promote materials
management.
EPA should establish a panel that includes
stakeholders and outside experts to advise on
materials management information priorities,
including types of information needed, key
indicators to track, how to make U.S.
information compatible with information being
generated in other countries, and how to get
started in developing the necessary data sets.
This process should be open and should invite public input. (See Box 11.) EPA should then
establish an EPA/state workgroup to follow up on the panel’s advice and create a plan for a
broadly useful set of indicators for life-cycle material management.
EPA also should create new partnerships with other government agencies, the research
community, and the private sectors to collect, improve, harmonize, and disseminate quality
data that is critical for life-cycle materials management. This should include establishing a
better mechanism than now exists for sharing data between EPA and states.
2.2 Improve decision tools to support life-cycle materials management.
EPA should work with states to create two decision support tools to support life-cycle
materials management:
Create a business decision support tool that connects economic and environmental
performance associated with materials management (including carbon footprint
reduction, as well as increased innovation and competitiveness).
Create a consumer decision support tool that calculates the human health and
environmental benefits associated with buying less material-intensive products or
services. The tool should have the ability to display information on product-specific
material use and provide performance comparisons.
Chapter 3 | Page 33
These tools should focus on depicting the energy/economic value of materials to help guide
fees and other economic incentives that encourage sound materials management and
discourage sending materials to disposal.
Box 11
CRITICAL DATA SETS FOR EFFECTIVE AND SUCCESSFUL LIFE-CYCLE MATERIALS
MANAGEMENT
• Material Flow Accounts to track the movement of materials from extraction to manufacturing,
product use, reuse/recycling, and eventual disposal, showing emissions to the environment.
Recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, as well as OECD. A growing number of
nations have regularly-updated official Material Flow Accounts, but the U.S. has only
prototypes.
• Life-cycle inventories and life-cycle assessment models to enable industry, consumers, and
government to analyze and understand the life-cycle impacts of products, both easily and in a
standard, comparable manner.
• Data that more fully characterize chemical content of materials/products, toxicity, chemical
emissions, and waste generation.
• Data on critical minerals to enable industry and government planning for using key minerals
whose supply may be uncertain. Recommended by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
• Data on water use associated with the life cycles of materials and products, to enable business
and government planning in the water-constrained situations we find now and expect to
encounter more frequently in the future.
• Data that connect the movement of materials, goods, and services in our economy to the
environment; such data should be available for use at several levels, from national to state.
The Comprehensive Environmental Data Archive (CEDA) which was used by the 2020 Vision
Workgroup is a leading candidate for such a database.
All these initiatives will require the support and cooperation (political, technical, and resource) of
other public and private organizations. EPA can not undertake them alone.
2.3 Expand research and innovations support programs to promote
materials management.
Research and innovation will be critical to giving government agencies and businesses the
information they need to implement materials management approaches. More work is
needed in a number of areas including the following.
Expand the materials-related research described in EPA’s Sustainability Research
Agenda.
Chapter 3 | Page 34
Expand research on life-cycle impacts of
new materials and technologies (e.g.,
nanotechnology, biomimicry, enzymes).
Work with other federal agencies to
expand science and policy research to
enable better global management of
critical materials, following the NAS
recommendations in their report,
“Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S.
Economy” (2007).
2.4 Emphasize materials
management in EPA and state
processes and procedures.
EPA has a number of opportunities to
immediately begin to emphasize materials
management in Agency processes and
procedures. These include:
Augment EPA regulatory development
guidance to encourage consideration of
full life cycles and all types of impacts and
externalities in the analysis for each
regulation. This should include exploring ways to integrate life-cycle materials
management considerations into economic and cost-benefit analysis. At present, such
analyses generally focus on the most direct impacts of an action, and not life-cycle
impacts.
Box 12
INTEGRATED PERMITTING IN THE
EUROPEAN UNION
Member countries of the European Union
(E.U.) are implementing a new Integrated
Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC)
permitting system. Under this system,
environmental permits for large and
complex industrial facilities must address
the entire footprint of a facility’s operations.
This includes not only the parameters
traditionally regulated in the U.S.
(emissions and discharges to air, water and
land), but also the selection and use of all
materials that serve as inputs into each
industrial process.
On an ongoing basis operators are expected
to evaluate the use of materials and where
possible minimize their environmental
impacts. The “footprint” focus of E.U.
integrated permits also means that
environmental standards—best available
techniques— apply to the use of natural
resources such as water and energy.
(j)
Consider ways for EPA and states to use the permitting process to encourage life-cycle
materials management. (See Box 12.)
Incorporate consideration of life-cycle materials management in EPA program
evaluations, wherever appropriate.
Encourage all current and future EPA and state partnership programs to address the full
life cycle of materials, not just one stage.
Revise EPA’s Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) mission statement,
goals, and strategic plan to emphasize that the Agency will be a leader in promoting
sustainability and materials management. Make sustainability central to EPA’s mission,
and emphasize materials management targets and actions.
Chapter 3 | Page 35
2.5 Support and reward federal, state, tribal, and local champions for
materials management and encourage collaboration.
EPA should bring attention to successful materials management efforts, encourage staff and
managers in EPA and state, tribal and local government agencies to further materials
management concepts, and promote and reward collaboration. There are a number of
specific opportunities to move towards these goals including the following.
Promote collaboration and partnership on life-cycle materials management between the
Agency and states, especially through ECOS and ASTSWMO. Life-cycle materials
management should be part of joint EPA/state environmental strategies.
Motivate staff throughout the federal and state governments to address the challenges
of materials management by providing consistent resources, attention, support, and
recognition.
Focus EPA’s life-cycle materials management efforts and engage broader participation
using multiple groups across the Agency, especially EPA’s Innovation Action Council
(IAC) and the Multi-Media Pollution Prevention (M2P2) Forum around specific, cross-
cutting materials management issues such as labeling for products.
Consult with the Tribal Operations Committee and Local Government Advisory
Committee to plan the best ways to work with tribes and local governments on materials
management.
Work with federal and state agencies to create proactive hiring and training strategies to
build the social marketing and social science skills, and engineering expertise, needed to
support materials management.
Adjust EPA and state recognition programs to reward superior life-cycle materials
management efforts, including superior product design, or create new programs to
recognize these efforts.
Chapter 3 | Page 36
RECOMMENDATION 3:
Accelerate the broad, ongoing public dialogue on life-
cycle materials management.
3.1 Stimulate a national conversation about materials management,
engaging multiple networks.
EPA should use its convening power to bring multiple parties together to advance a national
conversation about materials management. There are a number of specific opportunities for
this, including the following.
Develop an EPA-wide materials management communications plan and encourage state
agencies to develop similar plans.
Work with states, tribes, local environmental agencies, businesses, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), consumer groups, and the academic community to engage the
general public in a dialogue on the environmental impacts of consumption and the need
for more sustainable materials management.
» Develop a clear articulation of the urgent environmental and economic issues we face
with respect to materials and products, and why life-cycle materials management
approaches are needed.
» Share this statement with the public and invite public input by a variety of means,
including an electronic dialogue.
Consider establishing a national advisory group (a “Materials Innovation Council”) to
advise on life-cycle materials management strategies. Include states, tribes, local
environmental agencies, business and industry, environmental and public interest
groups, and the academic community. The Council could be part of the National Advisory
Council on Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT), or free standing. Their initial
assignment might be to assess and comment on the materials management strategies
currently underway in EPA program offices.
Consider what additional statutory authorities (if any) are needed for EPA and the states
to implement robust life-cycle materials management programs using both regulatory
and non-regulatory approaches.
Use the Environmental Executive Order 13423 and OMB’s Environmental Stewardship
Scorecard to initiate a broader dialogue with federal agencies on actions they can take to
support life-cycle materials management.
Chapter 3 | Page 37
3.2 Open a dialogue on economic instruments to encourage better
materials management.
Linking materials management choices to their economic implications and using economic
policy to better promote materials management will be important to integrating materials
management into the mainstream. There are a number of specific opportunities including
the following.
Work with other federal agencies to examine the full environmental impact of taxes and
subsidies, and their impacts on competitiveness and ensure that taxes and subsidies put
recycled materials on the same or better footing as virgin materials.
Work with other federal agencies to consider creating and promoting an alternative
measure of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that reflects the value of protecting the
environment and conserving resources.
3.3 Create ways to share knowledge on materials management.
One of the most powerful things EPA can do to further materials management is to make
clear and accurate information about the benefits of materials management approaches
available. This includes both information on best practices, case studies and lessons
learned, and the basic data and decision tools needed to implement materials management
concepts. EPA has a number of opportunities to share knowledge and information on
materials management including the following:
Create an internet-accessible network of information resources (e.g., data, decision
support tools, best practices) on materials management. The network should have
nodes for federal government, state government, businesses, NGOs, academia, and
communities, which allow easy movement of information and facilitation of action
between and among nodes. EPA should expand its work with the Department of
Commerce and its Manufacturing Extension Partnership to help on this effort.
Encourage institutions of higher education to incorporate systems and materials
management training across disciplines (from chemistry to engineering to business).
Share knowledge, best practices, and technology related to materials management,
product policy, and waste prevention efforts with other countries and learn from their
efforts. In particular:
» Expand U.S support for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development’s work on resource efficiency/productivity and sustainable materials
management and for the G-8’s work on 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle).
Chapter 3 | Page 38
» Support efforts of international organizations and research institutes to characte
international flows of materials.
Actively pursue the U.S.–Canada partnership on Sustainable Consumption and
Production (SCP) under the United Nati
rize
»
ons Environment Program (UNEP). Contribute
r
rograms on SCP.
ed
for or created by reuse, remanufacturing, and/or recycling.
» Involve state governments in international efforts where appropriate and feasible.
to the UNEP Marrakech Process to support SCP efforts and produce a global 10-Yea
Framework of P
» Advocate that the U.S. join the UNEP International Panel for Sustainable Resource
Management.
» Increase support for U.S. Government efforts to promote free trade in goods destin
Chapter 3 | Page 39
Endnotes
1
Matthews, Emily, et al. Weight of Nations: Material Outflows from Industrial Economies. World Resource
Institute. Washington, DC, 2000. p. v.
2
Rogich, Donald, et al., Material Flows in the United States: A Physical Accounting of the U.S. Industrial Economy,
World Resources Institute, Washington, DC, 2008, p10.
3
United Nations, Report of the Conference on Environment and Development (Agenda 21). 1992.
4
U.S. EPA. “Beyond RCRA: Waste and Materials Management in the Year 2020.” 2002. Online:
.
5
International Partnerships for Sustainable Resource Management. Exploring Elements for a Workplan (2008-
1020). UNEP/IRM/SC/0711/06
6
USGS. “Materials Flow and Sustainability.” June 2008. Online: .
7
Speth, James. The Bridge at the End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to
Sustainability. Yale University Press. 2008. 1-2.
8
Barker, Terry, et al. “Technical Summary.” Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III
to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [B. Metz, O. R. Davidson, P.
R. Bosch, R. Dave, L. A. Meyer (eds)], Cambridge University Press. 2007. 27.
9
Speth, James op. cit. p. 22.
10
World Wildlife Fund, Zoological Society of London, and Global Footprint Network. “Living Planet Report.” 2008.
Online: .
11
World Wildlife Fund, Zoological Society of London, and Global Footprint Network. “Living Planet Report.” 2008.
Online: .
12
Matthews, Emily, et al., op. cit. p. xi.
13
See, for instance, Matt Richtel and Kate Galbraith, “Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up,” New York
Times, December 8, 2008,http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/08recycle.html?hp , accessed
December 23, 2008.
14
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, “Let’s Call It Resource Productivity, and Let’s Be Bold,” presentation at the OECD-
UNEP Conference on Resource Productivity, 23-25 April 2008, Paris, France, slides available athttp://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/45/41/40677116.pdf , accessed December 23, 2008.
15
Matos, Grecia, and Lorie Wagner. “Consumption of Materials in the United States, 1900–1995.” Online:
.
16
Matos, Grecia, and Lorie Wagner. “Consumption of Materials in the United States, 1900–1995.” Online:
.
17
Wagner, Lorie. “Materials in the Economy—Material Flows, Scarcity, and the Environment.” U.S. Geological
Survey Circular 1221. 2002. Online : . 4.
18
National Academies Press. “Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy.” 2008. Online:
.
19
World Wildlife Fund, Zoological Society of London, and Global Footprint Network. Living Planet Report 2008. 2.
20
World Wildlife Fund, Zoological Society of London, and Global Footprint Network. Living Planet Report 2008. 3.
21
U.S. EPA, OSWER, OCPA. Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Materials and Land
Management Practices. (Not yet released).
22
U.S. EPA, Office of Solid Waste (5306P). “Municipal Solid Waste in The United States: 2007 Facts and Figures.”
EPA530-R-08-010. November 2008. Online: .
23
Matthews, et al, op. cit.. p.14.
24
A. Adriaanse et al., Resource Flows: The Material Basis of Industrial Economies, a joint publication of the World
Resources Institute (WRI), the Wuppertal Institute, the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning, and
the Environment, and the National Institute for Environmental Studies (WRI, Washington, D.C., 1997), p 1.
Online:
25
Matthews, et al., op. cit. p. v.
26
“World Wildlife Federation. “Living Planet Report.” 2008. Online:
.
27
National Resource Council of the National Academy. Minerals, Critical Minerals and the U.S. Economy, 2007.
Endnotes | Page 40
28
Jim Fava, “Sustainable manufacturing and distribution and International co-operation and partnerships,”
presentation at the OECD-UNEP Conference on Resource Productivity, 23-25 April 2008, Paris, France. Online: accessed December 23, 2008.
29http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ipp/pdf/eipro_report.pdf.
Text Box Sources
(a)
U.S. EPA, OSWER, OCPA. Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Materials and Land
Management Practices. (Not yet released).
(b)
USGS. “Materials Flow and Sustainability.” June 2008. Online: .
(c)
Engelman, Robert. “Fertility Falls, Population Rises, Future Uncertain.” Vital Signs Online. WorldWatch Institute.
March 12, 2008. Online:
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency. “International Coal Consumption Data: Selected
Countries, Most Recent Annual Estimates, 1980-2007.” October 17, 2008. Online:
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency. “Table 2.1: World Oil Balance, 2004-2008.” November
7, 2008. Online: www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t21.xls
Michael Brower and Warren Leon, The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, Three Rivers Press.
1999, p. 4-5.
(d)
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Recommendation of the Council on Resource
Productivity, 20 March 2008, Paris accessed August 4,
2008
(e)
Group of Eight (G8), Kobe 3R Action Plan, G8 Environment Ministers Meeting, 24-26 May 2008
accessed August 4, 2008.
(f)
G8, G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit Leaders Declaration, Hokkaido Toyako, 8 July 2008, paragraph 38.
accessed August 4, 2008
(g)http://www.icmm.com/page/1389/our-work/work-programs/articles/materials-stewardship
(h)http://www.wbcsdcement.org
(i)
http://www.keystone.org/spp/env-sustain_ag.html
(j)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, An In-Depth Look at the United Kingdom Integrated Permitting System,
Washington DC, 2008 accessed December 23, 2008.
Endnotes | Page 41
doc_900103563.pdf
We live in a material world. How our society uses materials is fundamental to many aspects of our economic and environmental future. If we want the U.S. to be competitive in the woreconomy, the sustainable use of materials must be our goal.
Acknowledgements
THE 2020 VISION WORKGROUP
Derry Allen, US EPA National Center for Environmental Innovation
Shannon Davis, US EPA Region 9
Priscilla Halloran, US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery
Peggy Harris, California Department of Toxic Substances Control
Kathy Hart, US EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics
Jennifer Kaduck, Georgia Department of Natural Resources
Angela Leith, US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery
Clare Lindsay, US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery
Mark McDermid, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources
Wayne Naylor, US EPA Region 3
Sam Sasnett, US EPA Office of Pollution Prevention and Toxics
Scott Palmer, US EPA Office of Resource Conservation and Recovery
Karen Sismour, Virginia Department of Environmental Quality
Pam Swingle, US EPA Region 4
Contractor support provided by Ross & Associates Environmental Consulting, Ltd. and
SRA International.
EPA530R09009
Table of Contents
Executive Summary .................................................................................................. i
Introduction: Our Material World................................................................................ 1
Chapter 1: A Resource Hungry World.......................................................................... 4
Understanding the Flow of Materials......................................................................... 4
Trends in Global Material Consumption and Environmental Impact ............................... 4
Trends in U.S. Material Consumption and Environmental Impact .................................. 7
Global and U.S. Trends: Looking Ahead................................................................... 8
Leading the U.S. to a More Sustainable Future: Materials Management ....................... 10
How Does Materials Management Differ From Current Approaches? ............................ 13
Chapter 2: Building an Analytic Framework................................................................ 18
Developing the Framework ................................................................................... 18
Applying the Framework to the U.S. Economy ......................................................... 20
What We Found .................................................................................................. 22
Conclusion ......................................................................................................... 23
Chapter 3: Workgroup Recommendations for Achieving Sustainable Materials
Management ...................................................................................................... 27
Recommendation 1: Promote efforts to manage materials and products on a
life-cycle basis .................................................................................................... 28
Recommendation 2: Build capacity and integrate materials management approaches
in existing government programs .......................................................................... 33
Recommendation 3: Accelerate the broad, ongoing public dialogue on life-cycle
materials management ........................................................................................ 37
List of Figures and Tables
Figure 1: Materials Consumption in the United States by Sector of Origin, 1975–2000 ....... 2
Figure 2: The Flow of Materials .................................................................................. 5
Figure 3: Framework for Examining Materials Management .......................................... 11
Figure 4: Materials Management Approaches ............................................................. 12
Figure 5: Example of a Life-cycle Materials Management Approach for Packaging ............ 17
F
Table 1: Summary of Top-Ranked Materials, Products, and Services.............................. 25
igure 6: U.S. Supply Chain Perspectives .................................................................. 21
Appendix: Relative Ranking Technical Support Document
(separate document)
Executive Summary
We live in a material world. How our society
uses materials is fundamental to many aspects
of our economic and environmental future. If
we want the U.S. to be competitive in the wor
economy, the sustainable use of materials must
be our goal.
ld
Our key message is simple.
• Our use of materials is very large and
increasing with population and economic
growth. Energy and water use accompany
materials use.
• Our use of materials now challenges the capacity of the Earth – air, water and land – to
withstand the many resulting environmental problems. This situation fundamentally
affects many other aspects of our future, such as the economy, energy and climate. We
need to fulfill our human needs and prosper while using less material, reducing toxics
and recovering more. Business as usual cannot continue.
• The public and private sectors have many of the tools that we need to manage materials
much more carefully than we typically do today. However, these tools are seldom used
to address the full life cycle of materials. This report describes specific measures that
EPA and state environmental agencies can take to: (1) promote efforts to manage
materials and products on a life-cycle basis, using present authorities, (2) build our
capacity to manage materials in the future, and (3) accelerate the public dialogue
necessary to start a generation-long shift in how we manage materials and create a
green, resilient and competitive economy. We should begin aggressively.
Our Material World
The foundation that underlies the world economy, prosperity and a healthy environment
rests largely on how people extract and use the full range of materials that come from and
return to the Earth such as wood, minerals, fuels, chemicals, agricultural plants and
animals, soil, and rock.
The world at large and the United States in particular use vast amounts of materials and
those amounts are rapidly increasing.
Executive Summary | Page i
In the past 50 years, humans have consumed more resources than in all previous
history.
The U.S. consumed 57% more materials in the year 2000 than in 1975; the global
increase was even higher.
With less than 5% of the world’s population, the U.S. was responsible for about one-
third of the world’s total material consumption in 1970-1995.
In 1900, 41% of the materials used in the U.S. were renewable (e.g., agricultural,
fishery, and forestry products); by 1995, only 6% of materials consumed were
renewable. The majority of materials now consumed in the U.S. are nonrenewable,
including metals, minerals, and fossil-fuel derived products.
Our reliance on minerals as fundamental ingredients in the manufactured products used
in the U.S.—including cell phones, flat-screen monitors, paint, and toothpaste—requires
the extraction of more than 25,000 pounds of new nonfuel minerals per capita each
year.
This rapid rise in material use has led to serious environmental effects such as habitat
destruction, biodiversity loss, overly stressed fisheries, and desertification.
Projections are that between 2000 and 2050, world population will grow 50%, global
economic activity will grow 500%, and global energy and materials use will grow
300%. Commenting on the effects of material resource use on the environment, the heads
of major research institutes in the United States, Germany, Japan, Austria, and the
Netherlands have noted that “unless economic growth can be dramatically decoupled
from resource use and waste generation, environmental pressures will increase
rapidly.
1
”
The strategic importance of materials is causing many people to look very carefully at all
aspects of the material life cycle that comprise our industrial practices and consumer habits.
The material lifecycle begins with the extraction or harvesting of raw materials. Materials
are then transported and processed to create the products and services that drive our
society. They are distributed, consumed, reused or recycled, and ultimately disposed.
Each stage of this cycle requires energy and water as inputs and creates impacts on the
environment. Because the stages are interrelated, it is important that sound approaches to
materials use consider the entire life cycle. The price system, regulatory framework,
technical information and human mindsets must all work together to enable and encourage
life-cycle materials management – an approach to serving human needs by
using/reusing resources most productively and sustainably throughout their life
cycles, generally minimizing the amount of materials involved and all the
associated environmental impacts.
By considering system-wide impacts, life-cycle materials management casts a far broader
net than traditional waste and chemicals management approaches and represents a change
Executive Summary | Page ii
in how we think about environmental protection. There are many means by which life-cycle
materials management can be accomplished. For instance, careful industrial and product
design that red
uces virgin material use and reuses materials can reduce impacts throughout
e system.
ve the
o
rtain impacts, but rarely take meaningful account of upstream or
ownstream effects.
e view of
eir materials and processes and becoming more sustainable and competitive.
Origin of This Report
m
ving in this direction and in the years that followed they have continued to
ake progress.
t
develop a roadmap to accelerate the move toward sustainable
aterials management.
Building an Analytic Framework
eously.
nt
th
While there are a number of existing EPA and state programs that are helping to mo
U.S. toward a more material-efficient society, there is no comprehensive materials
management strategy at the Federal level. Regulations and economic instruments seek t
prevent or mitigate ce
d
To accomplish the shift to life-cycle materials management, governments at all levels need
to make systematic efforts to enable, encourage, and collaborate with all parts of society,
including business and consumers, to ensure that materials are used more efficiently and
effectively. There is much work to be done, but there also is reason for modest optimism.
An increasing number of industries and individual companies are taking a life-cycl
th
In 2002, EPA published “Beyond RCRA: Waste and Materials Management in the Year
2020”—commonly referred to as the 2020 Vision. The 2020 Vision was the product of a
state/EPA workgroup and was endorsed by EPA and state environmental and waste progra
officials. One of the key findings was the need for society to shift focus away from waste
management toward materials management. Even before the Vision’s release, states and
EPA had been mo
m
In January 2007 the directors of EPA’s waste and chemical programs convened the presen
2020 Vision Workgroup to
m
The U.S. economy is a highly complex and intertwined system that transforms a few
hundred raw materials into thousands of products. It would be unrealistic to focus on and
transform all the materials and products consumed in an entire economy simultan
Instead, the Workgroup recommends a strategy that includes a few well-chosen
demonstration projects to provide insights into applying integrated materials manageme
approaches (including the need for better coordination of resources, product and waste
programs). To help identify candidates for these demonstration projects, the Workgroup
developed a framework to relatively rank the materials, products and services consumed in
the U.S. from a life-cycle perspective, accounting for the environmental impacts, resource
Executive Summary | Page iii
use (material, energy, water), and waste. This framework reflects the Workgroup’s
that these are the types of information that must be accounted for from a lifecycle
perspective when applying materials management. Thirty-eight (38) materials, products
and services were identified as possible candidates for demonstration projects. These can b
roughly grouped into construction and development, food products and servi
belief
e
ces, forestry,
etals, nonrenewable organics, textiles, and other products and services.
Recommendations
r
d Development (OECD) and the Group of 8
8) endorsed by the United States in 2008.
d
cus of
should be expanded to encompass life-cycle
aterials management more fully.
ing
o
s. EPA and states should
cognize and support champions who make this happen.
eholder
omentum
icipate in
ternational efforts related to sustainable material management.
m
The Workgroup makes three major recommendations to EPA and state environmental
agencies. Some of these recommendations reflect points in international agreements unde
the Organization for Economic Cooperation an
(G
1. Promote efforts to manage materials and products on a life-cycle basis. EPA an
state environmental agencies should initiate demonstration projects on a few well-chosen
materials and products to show the value of integrated materials management strategies.
Further, these agencies should incorporate materials management as an important strategic
approach for addressing climate change and other environmental challenges. The fo
existing chemical and waste programs
m
2. Build capacity and integrate materials management approaches in exist
government programs. EPA and state environmental agencies must ensure the
availability of data and decision tools needed to support life-cycle materials management,
including necessary research. Materials management strategies should be integrated int
regulatory development, permitting and partnership program
re
3. Accelerate the broad, ongoing public dialogue on life-cycle materials
management. Governments alone cannot bring about the shift to life-cycle materials
management. EPA and state environmental agencies should convene multi-stak
national dialogues on materials management to create public awareness of the
environmental consequences of material and product choices and accelerate the m
toward change at all levels. It also will be critical for the Agency to part
in
Executive Summary | Page iv
RECOMMENDATIONS
RECOMMENDATION 1: Promote efforts to
manage materials and products on a life-cycle
basis.
1.1 Select a few materials/products for an
integrated life-cycle approach, and launch
demonstration projects.
1.2 Expand the focus of existing environmental
programs to encompass life-cycle materials
management more fully.
1.3 Promote specific materials management
approaches that can help address climate
change.
1.4 Promote greener products, product
stewardship, and product-to-service
transformations.
1.5 Strengthen market signals to reduce waste and
other adverse environmental impacts
throughout the life cycle of materials.
RECOMMENDATION 2: Build capacity and
integrate materials management approaches
in existing government programs.
2.1 Establish and improve databases to promote
materials management.
2.2 Improve decision tools to support life-cycle
materials management.
2.3 Expand research and innovations support
programs to promote materials management.
2.4 Emphasize materials management in EPA and
state processes and procedures.
2.5 Support and reward federal, state, tribal, and
local champions for materials management and
encourage collaboration.
RECOMMENDATION 3: Accelerate the broad,
ongoing public dialogue on life-cycle materials
management.
3.1 Stimulate a national conversation about
materials management, engaging multiple
networks.
3.2 Open a dialogue on economic instruments to
encourage better materials management.
3.3 Create ways to share knowledge on materials
management.
These recommendations represent
parallel paths that should be taken at
the same time. Specific actions
described under each recommendation
are a mix of near term and long term
efforts to develop the data, information,
programs, policies, and partnerships
that will begin to change the ways we
think about and use materials.
These changes will not be easy. This
report is a roadmap to the year 2020 –
eleven years away. While this is not
enough time to complete the changes
recommended, it is enough time to
make substantial progress. Starting
now is critical because many of the
issues we are facing require long-term
solutions that cannot be put into place
quickly when a problem becomes
obvious or acute. The recommendations
can be an important element of our
national strategy to address current
economic, energy, environment and
climate issues and set us on a course to
be more prosperous, competitive and
resilient for years to come.
Executive Summary | Page v
Introduction:
Our Material World
Wood, minerals, fuels, chemicals, agricultural
plants and animals, soil, rock and other
materials form the foundation that underlies
both the economy and the environment.
Climate change, energy policy, and the
economy all create headlines, but the stories
that follow often miss the point that all these
issues are, in part, symptoms of how we use
materials. It is becoming increasingly clear
that how we use materials is a large factor in
energy use, climate change and the economy, and an important issue in its own right.
Therefore, if we want to address the issues behind the headlines, and if we want the U.S
be competitive in the world economy, sustainable use of materials must be our goa
. to
l.
The United States uses vast amounts of materials and these amounts are rapidly
increasing—we consumed 57% more materials (by weight) in the year 2000 than we did in
1975 (see Figure 1). As described in Chapter 1, the global increase in materials use was
higher. Materials returning to the environment increased 26% from 1975 to 2000 and the
amounts remaining in use (mainly as durable products, buildings and roads, or “net
additions to stock”) rose 83%.
2
Historically, population and economic growth and new
technologies have translated almost automatically into increased use of materials, energy
and water.
No matter how one does the calculations, the implications of current patterns of material
use for the environment (including climate), the economy and our survival are profound and
unsustainable. We must change the historical relationship of materials, energy, growth and
the environment. When used carefully, materials hold the keys to enormous opportunity,
both as our nation competes in the global economy and as we move into the 21
st
century.
Used carelessly, materials hold another set of keys, which open equally large threats to our
health, our economy and our environment.
The opportunities presented by sound life-cycle approaches to using materials are being
demonstrated in many places today. During the past several years, many companies and
organizations have discovered ways to do what was previously thought improbable or even
impossible. By changing the ways they use materials, they have found ways to lighten their
Introduction | Page 1
environmental impacts significantly while increasing profit. They are making the U.S. more
competitive with products that are recognized as more sustainable.
0,000
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
7,000
1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000
M
a
t
e
r
i
a
l
C
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
(
D
M
C
)
(
m
i
l
l
i
o
n
m
e
t
r
i
c
t
o
n
s
)
Forestry
Agriculture
Nonrenewable
Organic
Material
Metals and
Minerals
Figure 1: Materials Consumption in the United States by Sector of Origin, 1975–2000
Source: WRI Material Flows Database 2005
Threats to our environment caused by the ways we use materials are all around us and are
not new. In 1992, world leaders participating in the Earth Summit declared that “a
principal cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the
steady increase in materials production, consumption and disposal.”
3
In response,
governments around the world, including the U.S., have acknowledged the goal of
sustainable material use, but have struggled with how to achieve it.
This struggle about how best to manage materials demands a new level of awareness and
cooperation within and between nations. The world shares a finite set of materials and other
natural resources. We must know and respect the limits in order to live together and thrive
within our means.
The current economic situation makes the opportunities and threats related to materials
even more significant than they were only a short time ago. We are at a moment when
many people are receptive to new approaches for the economy and the environment. We
also observe many people and companies moving to use and spend less that they did
previously.
It is not clear what choices individuals and companies will make. Therefore, it is
important that both the federal and state governments make more systematic
efforts to enable, encourage, and collaborate with all parts of society to see that
materials are used more effectively and efficiently with less overall environmental
toll.
Introduction | Page 2
These changes will not be easy. This report is a roadmap to the year 2020—eleven years
away. Eleven years is not enough time to complete the changes this report describes, but it
is enough time to make substantial progress.
There are actions we can take now that would build on our present programs and enhance
our capacity for the future. We also need to accelerate the broad public dialogue about
materials management to develop a common understanding, an ethic, a vision and a plan to
move ahead. The recommendations in this report can be an important element of our
national strategy to address the recent economic, energy, environment and climate
headlines and set us on a course to be more prosperous, competitive and resilient for years
to come.
This report builds on an effort begun in 1999,
when EPA and state environmental agencies
began a national dialogue through the Future
of Waste Roundtable to suggest new ways of
addressing waste generation and the use of
our natural resources. In 2002, EPA published
“Beyond RCRA: Waste and Materials
Management in the Year 2020”—commonly
referred to as the 2020 Vision.
4
(See Box 1.)
Box 1
THE 2020 VISION
1. Use resources in sustainable ways.
2. Take a life-cycle approach to
managing risks.
3. Practice safe management for any
waste that remains.
The Vision was described in the 2002
report. It was endorsed by EPA, the
Environmental Council of the States and the
Association of State and Territorial Solid
Waste Management Officials.
One of the key findings of the 2020 Vision
was the need to shift from waste
management to materials management.
This report is organized as follows:
Chapter 1, “A Resource Hungry World,” describes trends in resource consumption,
environmental impacts and why better materials management is essential.
Chapter 2, “Building an Analytic Framework” describes the Workgroup’s analytic
approach to identifying materials and products that should be the initial focus of
materials management demonstration projects.
Chapter 3, “Workgroup Recommendations for Achieving Sustainable Materials
Management” contains the recommendations.
Introduction | Page 3
Chapter 1:
A Resource Hungry World
Understanding the Flow of
Materials
To understand the full effect that material use
has on the environment, it is critical to
understand the material life cycle, or how
materials flow through the environment and the
economy. The flow begins with the Earth itself,
which provides a wealth of resources, including
renewable and nonrenewable resource stocks,
and energy sources. After materials are extracted and harvested from the Earth, most enter
the product and service supply chains or are used for energy production. Through product
design and manufacturing, materials are processed to create the products and services that
meet the needs of society (see Figure 2).
Some raw materials and all products and services are then used or consumed by businesses
or individual consumers. At the end of their lives, most products are collected and either
reused, processed for return to use, or thrown away as waste.
Every step in this material flow requires energy and water as inputs and every step results
in environmental impacts to air, water, and land. Throughout the material flow, materials
and products require transport. As a result, this material flow contributes to a wide range of
global, national, and local environmental impacts.
Trends in Global Material Consumption and Environmental
Impact
In the past 50 years, humans have consumed more resources than they have in all previous
history.
5
Between 1970 and 1995 alone, worldwide consumption of raw materials (not
including food and fuel) doubled.
6
We can see the effects of material consumption on
localized areas, and global environmental systems. For example:
Chapter 1 | Page 4
Transportation
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Emissions to Air, Water, and Land
Renew Remanufacture Recycle Reuse Composting
Resource
Ext ract ion
Mat erial
Processing
Product
Design and
Manuf act uring
Disposal Collect ion/
Processing
Product
Use
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Figure 2: The Flow of Materials
Source: State/EPA 2020 Vision Workgroup
The rate of deforestation in the tropics is approximately one acre per second.
Half the world’s tropical and temperate forests are now gone.
75% of marine fisheries are now overfished or fished to capacity.
Freshwater withdrawals have doubled between 1960 and 2000; rivers including the
Colorado, Yellow, Ganges, and Nile do not reach the ocean in dry seasons.
Habitat destruction has contributed to species disappearance at rates about a thousand
times faster than normal.
Over half the agricultural land in drier regions suffers from some degree of deterioration
and desertification.
As available ore grades for some minerals decrease, the amounts of materials that have
to be mined and processed to produce equivalent product increases, along with the
environmental impacts.
Persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic chemicals can now be found throughout the food
chain.
7
Between 1970 and 2004, worldwide greenhouse gas emissions increased by 70%.
8
Most of the observed increase in global average temperatures since the mid-twentieth
century is likely due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations associated with
anthropogenic sources, including the extraction, processing, use and disposal of
materials.
9
The World Wildlife Federation routinely calculates humanity’s ecological footprint—the area
of productive land and water needed to provide resources and services such as food, fiber,
and land on which to build, and land to absorb carbon dioxide released into the
Chapter 1 | Page 5
environment. This analysis is used to portray human demand, based on the biological
capacity required to support resource consumption and waste absorption.
Since the late 1980s, our human footprint has exceeded the Earth’s biocapacity. In 2005,
global biocapacity was measured as 2.1 hectares per capita, while the average demand or
footprint per person was 2.7 hectares. “This ecological 'overshoot' means that it now takes
about one year and three months for the Earth to regenerate what we use in a single
year.”
10
The Earth’s regenerative ability can no longer keep pace with human demand—
people are turning resources into waste faster than nature can turn waste back into
resources. In economic terms, we are no longer living off nature’s interest, but drawing
down its capital.
11
Globally, we can no longer presume that materials and resources we
count on as abundant will remain so indefinitely.
In addition to exceeding the Earth’s biocapacity by extracting too many materials, we return
most of what we extract to the Earth as waste very quickly. According to the World
Resources Institute, “one half to three quarters of annual resource inputs to industrial
economies is returned to the environment as wastes within just one year.”
12
Prices for many materials are heavily influenced by global markets. During the past several
years, increased demand caused worldwide prices for many raw and used materials to rise
substantially. The recent economic situation, however, has reduced demand, causing prices
for many materials to drop. The immediate effect of this has been to weaken recycling
markets. If prices stay low, demand may increase over time. However, neither of these
trends is helpful for long-term materials management or the environment.
13
In general, it is widely understood that the price system leads to economically efficient
allocation of material resources, but that does not mean that it necessarily encourages
sustainable materials management. For instance, over the past 200 years, real prices for
many industrial raw materials have fallen, often because of improved technology and low
energy prices.
14
This has helped stimulate unparalleled economic growth, but, as mentioned
above, it also has encouraged enormous increases in the amounts of materials used around
the world.
There are several other features of markets and prices for many materials that do not
encourage sustainable materials management:
Prices for materials often do not adequately reflect “externalities” such as environmental
damages incurred along the life cycle, leading to more consumption and greater
environmental damages than would have otherwise occurred.
Markets often deal poorly with intergenerational equity, and thus do not encourage
sustainability.
As historical patterns and the recent rise and fall of prices for oil and many materials
illustrate, prices are frequently not a good indicator of long-term supplies and scarcities.
Chapter 1 | Page 6
Efficient use of material resources generally has little or nothing to do with toxicity, and
in fact can encourage the use of toxic alternatives.
In theory, environmental and other regulations might be able to address many of these
problems. In practice, however, our regulatory programs have not been designed to deal
adequately with the multitude of decisions that are made along the life cycle of materials,
and unsustainable materials use is often the result. Achieving materials management will
require the full set of public policy tools including economic policies, regulations, information
and partnerships. With the right signals the market should be able to do a better job
of addressing the range of problems that relate to sustainability.
Trends in U.S. Material Consumption and Environmental
Impact
The global trends are echoed by U.S. trends. Material resources used and consumed in the
U.S. have grown from 161 million metric tons in 1900 to 2.8 billion metric tons in 1995—the
equivalent of over 10 tons per person.
15
Of all the materials the U.S. consumed in the past
100 years, more than half were consumed in the last 25 years.
16
Not only is the U.S. consuming more materials, but the types of materials consumed have
changed significantly over time. In 1900, 41% of the materials used in the U.S. were
renewable (e.g., agricultural, fishery, and forestry products); by 1995, only 6% of materials
consumed were from renewable sources. The majority of materials consumed in the U.S.
now are nonrenewable, including metals, minerals, and fossil-fuel derived products.
17
Our
reliance on minerals as fundamental ingredients in the manufactured products used in the
U.S.—including cell phones, flat-screen monitors, paint, and toothpaste—requires more than
25,000 pounds of new nonfuel minerals per capita each year.
18
Correspondingly, the ecological footprint of a U.S. resident is estimated at 9.4 hectares,
more than four times the global biocapacity per capita.
19
This large ecological footprint is
primarily associated with energy production, which in turn is tied to greenhouse gas
emissions.
20
A draft report being developed by EPA estimates that roughly 42% of U.S.
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions may be associated with material extraction and
harvesting, and the production, transportation, and disposal of goods in the U.S., in part
due to the energy needs for these processes.
21
(See Box 2.)
Not only are we drawing upon nonrenewable resources and impacting the environment at
an increasing rate, we are also creating more waste. As U.S. consumers have grown to
favor disposable products and convenience goods, waste has increased at all stages of the
material life cycle.
Chapter 1 | Page 7
The most visible waste in the U.S. is
municipal solid waste, of which we generate
over 250 million tons per year. U.S. per
capita generation of municipal solid waste
increased by 42% between 1970 and 2007,
and has now leveled off at approximately 4.6
pounds per person per day.
22
But municipal
solid waste represents only a small fraction of
the total amount of waste generated within
our society. One estimate of the total waste
generated in the U.S. in 1996 is over 23
billion metric tons per year. Most of this
waste is “hidden” from the economy.
23
Far more materials are being moved or
transformed to meet society’s needs than
most people realize. In particular, “hidden”
material flows (i.e., waste) include mining
overburden, earth moving, and erosion, and
account for as much as 75% of the total
materials that industrial economies use.
24
However, because these hidden flows do not
enter the economy as commodities bought or sold, they are not considered part of the
traditional waste stream, and are not accounted for in the gross domestic product. They do,
however, result in environmental degradation such as landscape alteration, loss of soil
structure and fertility, stream flow changes, ecosystem disruption, and toxic impacts to
land, air, and water from direct releases and leaching.
Box 2
MATERIALS AND CLIMATE
Reallocating the U.S. GHG Inventory to a
materials management perspective reveals
that roughly 42% of U.S. emissions are
associated with the provision of materials
and goods, including emissions from:
• Industrial sectors (direct emissions)
• Electricity used by industrial sectors
• Freight transportation
• Waste and waste management
• Agricultural sources
• Consumption of fuels and electricity in
food processing
• Leaks from refrigeration
• Transportation of food-related products
• Industrial wastewater treatment by
food processing facilities.
(a)
Global and U.S. Trends: Looking Ahead
Commenting on the effects of material resource use on the environment, the heads of major
research institutes in the United States, Germany, Japan, Austria, and the Netherlands have
noted that they expect that between 2000 and 2050, world population will grow
50%, global economic activity will grow 500%, and global energy and materials
use will grow 300%. The world has been and is likely to continue experiencing
unprecedented growth in global economic output, human population, and demands on air,
land, water, and other resources. Reflecting on these trends, these same research leaders
have stated that “unless economic growth can be dramatically decoupled from
resource use and waste generation, environmental pressures will increase
rapidly.”
25
While developed countries place more pressure on the environment than developing nations
on a per capita and total basis today, this pattern is rapidly changing. (See Box 3.) The
World Wildlife Federation has observed that “China is now on parity with the U.S. in terms
Chapter 1 | Page 8
Box 3
US MATERIALS CONSUMPTION
Between 1970 and 1995, the U.S.
represented about one- third of the world’s
total material consumption.
(b)
With less than 5% of the world’s
population, the U.S. consumes:
(c)
• 33% of paper
• 25% of oil
• 15% of coal
• 17% of aluminum
• 15% of copper
of its pressure on the world’s resources” as
measured by ecological footprint.
26
As
developing nations continue to industrialize
and increase their material consumption,
resource demands will only increase.
Through globalization, all countries are
becoming increasingly reliant on imports. This
shift has several important environmental
consequences:
It creates a disconnect between the
environmental impacts of extraction, and
production; these impacts are easy for the
users of products and services to ignore
when they take place far away.
The environmental impacts of extraction
and production can be higher than they might otherwise be if the exporting country has
lower environmental safeguards than the importing country.
Shipping goods long distances increases the impacts on the environment, including
greenhouse gas emissions.
The world has not recently faced significant disruptive crises in the supply of materials,
largely because new discoveries, substitutes, and technologies have averted or delayed
predictions of shortages. Still, the international competition for some of the most abundant
supplies is intense. The prospect for supply crises with certain key materials increases each
year. It is not hard to imagine that if current and projected material consumption trends
continue, we will face scarcity and depletion crises and leave far less resources than we
have now for future generations.
27
However, the most pressing materials issue we face is
the capacity of the Earth—the air, the water, and the land—to withstand the many types of
environmental problems caused by our current patterns and rates of resource use.
These trends make the shift to sustainable materials management critical. The U.S. can lead
the way in this effort. There is the potential not just to recover our own economy and
environment, but also to assist developing nations in bypassing the less efficient practices of
our history and achieving sustainable materials management. Without this leadership, we
face increasing environmental deterioration and economic disruption. (See Box 4.)
Chapter 1 | Page 9
Box 4
INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS
The international community is moving quickly towards life-cycle materials management. Many of
the ideas and recommendations in this report reflect major points in two international agreements
endorsed by the United States in 2008.
In the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Council Recommendation
on Resource Productivity (28 March 2008), OECD members agreed to:
• Strengthen their national capacity to measure and analyze material flows in ways that are
internationally compatible;
• Develop and use indicators that assess the efficiency of material resource use;
• Take appropriate actions to improve resource productivity and reduce negative environmental
impacts of materials and product use by promoting integrated life-cycle approaches, setting
targets where appropriate, promoting new technologies, and sharing best practices;
• Work with relevant departments of government and organizations outside of government to
this end; and
• Assist non-member countries to this end.
(d)
The “Kobe 3R [Reduce, Reuse, Recycle] Action Plan” stresses that Group of Eight (G8) countries
should:
• Give high priority to 3Rs policies, including the option of setting appropriate targets,
• Work together to encourage 3Rs on a global scale, through sharing of information and reducing
regulatory and trade barriers that impede this goal, and collaborate to promote 3Rs capacity in
developing countries.
The plan highlights were included in the G8 Summit Leaders Declaration in July 2008.
(e)(f)
Leading the U.S. to a More Sustainable Future: Materials
Management
Materials management is a conceptual framework for systematically addressing the
movement of materials through the economy and the environment from extraction to end of
life. Figure 3 shows the complex interaction between the ecological, industrial, and societal
systems supporting material use. Ecological systems provide the raw material inputs that
drive industrial systems, or may be consumed directly by societal systems. Industrial and
societal systems generate waste that can be recovered for beneficial use or disposed. As
shown in Figure 3, there are many connections between components of the material life
cycle, and therefore, many potential points for policy intervention.
Chapter 1 | Page 10
Natural
Resource
Policies
Product Life
Cycle Policies
Waste
Management
Policies
Industrial Systems
Product/Service
Supply Chains
Energy Production
Ecological Systems
Renewable Resource
Stocks
Non?renewable
Resource Stocks
Finite Media
Energy Sources
Societal Systems
Energy Use
Service Use
Durable Product
Use
Consumable Product
Use
Material
Harvesting
Demand
Fulfillment
Waste Material
Disposal or Recovery
Direct
Utilization
Figure 3: Framework for Examining Materials Management
Source: Fiksel, Joseph. "A Framework for Sustainable Materials Management," Journal of Materials, August 2006
The concept of materials management is fundamental to reducing our environmental
footprint and assuring that we have adequate resources to meet today’s needs and
those of the future. The Workgroup developed the following definition of materials
management, drawing from definitions used by other groups in the U.S. and abroad:
Materials management is an approach to serving human needs by
using/reusing resources most productively and sustainably throughout their
life cycles, generally minimizing the amount of materials involved and all the
associated environmental impacts.
In this context, the Workgroup has followed the lead of many international organizations
and defines materials to include everything that is extracted or derived from natural
resources, which may be either inorganic or organic, at all points throughout their life
cycles. We consider water and air as resources, but do not include them in our definition
of materials, except as they become incorporated into a product. However, materials
use does have direct impacts on air and water quality and scarcity.
Chapter 1 | Page 11
By considering the impacts throughout the entire life cycle, materials
management works to reduce environmental impacts, both (1) directly at each
stage and (2) indirectly at multiple stages by reducing the amounts of
materials used, and thus reducing system-wide environmental impacts. Some of
the means by which this can happen are shown in Figure 4. For instance, industrial and
product design can reduce impacts throughout the system.
Transportation
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Emissions to Air, Water, and Land
Renew Remanufacture Recycle Reuse Composting
Resource
Ext ract ion
Mat erial
Processing
Product
Design and
Manuf act uring
Disposal Collect ion/
Processing
Product
Use
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
Energy,
Water
Inputs
A B C D E F
Key: Approaches to Reduce Environmental Impacts in Individual Stages
A?C Material substitution, replacing toxic or hazardous materials with benign ones (detoxification)
A?C Cleaner technologies, reducing the toxic or hazardous properties of waste streams
A?C Redesign industrial processes to reduce toxic pollution and waste
A?F Reduction of GHG emissions associated with fossil fuel combustion and disposal
A?D Material regulation, restricting the use specified materials
D?E Recovery and beneficial recycling of post?industrial or post?consumer waste (Product Stewardship)
F Waste modification through chemical or biological treatment
F Waste containment or isolation to prevent human and ecological exposure
F In?situ waste treatment
Key: Approaches to Reduce Systemwide Material Use
A Extract less raw materials; extract only what is needed
A Prioritize the use of renewable materials and those that can be used in closed loop systems
A?F Increase in the material efficiency in the supply chain (zero?waste, dematerialization, industrial ecology)
A?F Industrial and product redesign to reduce mass, material use, packaging, life?cycle energy requirement, and toxicity
A?F Reduction of transport in the supply chain, thus reducing fuel and vehicle use
D?F Consume products that are less material?intensive, made with recyclable components, and more durable
C?D Substitution of electronic services for material intensive services
C?D Substitution of services for products
F Only biodegradable materials are disposed and returned to the Earth
A?F Consider the function of the product and whether it can be provided in a different manner
Note, Each of these approaches can be encouraged by a variety of “tools,” such as regulations, economic incentives,
information, collaboration, and so forth.
Figure 4: Materials Management Approaches
Source: State/EPA 2020 Vision Workgroup
Chapter 1 | Page 12
Materials management encourages reduction in the amount of material extracted, and
selection of renewable materials over non-renewable resources, where appropriate.
Materials management also encourages changes in product design to use less material,
reduce toxicity, and make products more reusable and/or recyclable. From the consumer
perspective, materials management encourages consumption of products and services
with the least environmental impact.
In a system that recognizes the true value of materials, and accounts for all the
environmental impacts associated with materials use, the concept of waste is
significantly changed. Products and materials presently viewed as acceptable to throw
away will increasingly be recognized as valuable. Materials that used to “go to waste”
will be reused or become feedstocks for new products and processes. Biodegradable
materials that are not reused will be returned to the Earth to renew natural systems.
Over time, as products and processes and ways of using things change, materials will
begin to move in abundant sustainable cycles that nourish rather than deplete the Earth.
Different materials will require different management strategies. For example, the most
important focus for non-renewable materials such as metals often will be to get the most
use and reuse from each finite unit of the resource, while the focus for renewables such
as wood and forest products has to include protection for the natural ecosystems that
produce the resource.
28
Attention to materials use efficiency and recovery will accelerate as concerns over
climate results in new mandates to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It is likely that
new laws to address climate change will raise the cost of carbon-based energy, driving
more efficient use of materials and favoring less energy-intensive materials. Incentives
to conserve water in industrial settings are also likely to encourage more material
conservation.
Some organizations and businesses already are making great strides in improving their
economic bottom line and materials management processes. (See Box 5.)
How Does Materials Management Differ From Current
Approaches?
Our current environmental regulatory system focuses largely on controlling “end-of-pipe”
emissions—direct releases to air (e.g., from smokestacks or car tailpipes), water (e.g.,
effluent from factories or water treatment), and the land (e.g., landfill disposal). This
system has and will continue to prevent or alleviate some important environmental impacts.
However, because we do not systematically address materials movement through our
economy and the environment (looking at the whole life cycle), we end up missing some
impacts and/or inadvertently shifting environmental impacts from one medium to another.
Chapter 1 | Page 13
These missed opportunities and undesired shifts leave us ill-equipped to address the
pressures that will come with increases in population, economic activity and materials use.
Box 5
MOVING TO MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
An increasing number of industries and individual companies are taking a life-cycle view of their
materials and processes, with the goal of reducing their environmental footprint, identifying greater
efficiencies, stimulating technical advances, and making themselves more sustainable and
competitive. Three examples are as follows:
• The metals industry, under the leadership of the International Council on Mining and Metals,
has developed a Materials Stewardship Strategy, which aims to supply metals responsibly and
to supervise materials flows so as to maximize societal value and minimize impact on human
health and the environment. As part of this effort, the metals industry is starting to develop a
better understanding of the full life-cycle of minerals and metal products. It is building and
strengthening relationships with actors along the value chain (including commodity
associations, fabricators, product manufacturers, scrap sellers, and recyclers). In addition, this
project is making efforts to optimize the production and application of metals.
(g)
• Ten cement companies are participating in a World Business Council for Sustainable
Development-sponsored sustainability initiative for cement and concrete. One
recommendation of this effort is that all old concrete should be used to make new concrete, or
as aggregate for road construction, working toward a goal of recycling all demolition concrete.
Work is also underway to reduce the carbon footprint of cement by using clinker substitutes,
alternative fuels and raw materials, and improving energy efficiency.
(h)
• The Keystone Center is facilitating discussions by a collaborative stakeholder group (consisting
of producers, agribusinesses, food and retail companies, and conservation organizations) to
develop a supply-chain system for encouraging sustainable agriculture. One of the first tasks
of this group has been to develop metrics to measure the environmental, health, and socio-
economic outcomes of agriculture in the U.S. These metrics will be used to create a
Sustainability Index to help quantify and identify key impacts and trends over time, encourage
industry-wide dialogue and goal-setting, and assist in continued progress on the path to
sustainability over time.
(i)
Even if our current regulatory framework operated perfectly, it was not designed with
sustainability in mind and would not bring us to this point. This is a major challenge for
EPA, state, tribal, and local governments, along with the governments of other nations. We
need to identify new approaches and better integrate currently separate programs, to
address how we extract materials and design, manufacture, use and deal with products at
end-of-life. We need to do this not only for our environmental well-being, but also to
maintain our competitiveness in the global market place. Increasingly, other nations are
demanding more sustainable uses of materials and chemicals. U.S. industry needs to be
equipped to meet these demands or it will fall behind competitively.
Materials management is different from current waste management approaches in several
important ways:
Chapter 1 | Page 14
Materials management seeks the most productive use of resources, while waste
management seeks to minimize and/or manage wastes or pollutants.
Materials management focuses broadly on impacts and policies relating to all the life-
cycle stages of a material or product—including such upstream considerations as using
less material, using less environmentally intensive materials, or making products more
durable, as well as downstream solutions such as reuse and recycling. Waste
management usually focuses only on what to do with wastes once they are generated.
Materials management is concerned with inputs and outputs from/to the environment,
including use of materials, energy and water, plus multiple environmental impacts; it is
not geographically constrained. Waste management is concerned mainly with outputs to
the environment (air, water, land) and usually only those from waste and only where the
waste is managed.
The goal of materials management is overall long-term system sustainability, while the
goal of waste management is often focused on managing a single set of environmental
impacts.
Materials management counts as responsible parties all those who are involved in the
life cycle of a material or product, including industry and consumers. In contrast, waste
management usually counts as responsible parties only those who generate waste.
Materials management therefore casts a far broader net than waste and chemicals
management has traditionally done. It seeks to address and reduce the life-cycle
environmental impacts from the making and consumption of materials and products and
applies a systems-wide perspective in doing so. While there are a number of existing EPA
and state programs that are helping to move the U.S. toward a more material-efficient
society, there is no single strategy at the Federal level in the U.S. that collectively looks at
all environmental impacts of materials and products throughout their life cycles. Regulations
and economic instruments seek to prevent or mitigate certain impacts, but they rarely take
sufficient account of upstream or downstream effects.
Seen this way, materials management is a very broad concept. It overlaps and supplements
many other concepts that are being adopted by governments, businesses and others. (See
Box 6.)
Solid waste programs at EPA and in most states tend to address waste in two ways: (1)
by regulations governing waste identification, management, disposal and cleanup; and (2)
by collaborations to encourage waste minimization, greater recycling, use of more recycled
content, and identification of beneficial uses for materials that would otherwise be thrown
away. In recent years, waste programs also have begun to address toxic chemicals
reduction. For instance, the National Program for Environmental Priorities (NPEP) focuses
on toxic chemical content in processes, products and intermediaries. However, the majority
of waste programs’ efforts have not focused on reducing the use of materials or the toxicity
Chapter 1 | Page 15
of products or manufacturing processes,
working with manufacturers to make sure
that materials and products are more easily
reused or recycled at end of life. Only by
further shifting our focus away from end-of-
life management towards solutions that
address the root cause of waste can we begin
to conserve resources and ensure that
materials have high-v
or
alue end markets when
e products containing them reach the end
kaging
n
are in an ideal position of
ptimizing a package for its entire life cycle.
e
ent
s
ed
al
and
r life cycles. Some
states are moving in this direction. (See Box
7.)
th
of their useful lives.
EPA’s work with the Sustainable Pac
Coalition (SPC), an NGO, provides an
example of how lifecycle materials
management approaches are being applied
today. EPA has supported the SPC’s efforts i
creating a comprehensive set of resources for
design of more sustainable packaging – the
Design Guidelines for Sustainable Packaging
and the COMPASS design tool. As the design
of packaging influences the entire packaging
supply chain, designers who understand the
flow of materials
o
(See Figure 5.)
EPA’s chemical programs have made progress in recent years towards adopting life-cycle
materials management. Efforts that address choices made early in the life cycle, such as th
Green Chemistry, Green Engineering, Pollution Prevention and Design for the Environm
Programs, form a good foundation on which to build. However, the more “traditional” part
of the programs remain largely focused on
reducing or eliminating the use of individual
chemicals, or classes of chemicals in certain
products or processes that may pose
potential risks—often by using inform
substitution to move toward safer chemic
substitutes. To move more aggressively
toward the broader goal of sustainability,
more effort needs to be made to identify
address the full range of environmental
impacts associated with materials and
products throughout thei
Box 6
MATERIALS MANAGEMENT AND
RELATED CONCEPTS
Materials management is a very broad
concept. It overlaps and supplements
many other concepts being adopted by
government, business and others including,
but not limited to:
• Sustainable Materials Management
(OECD)
• Sustainable Production and
Consumption (UNEP)
• Sustainable Resource Management
(UNEP)
• 3Rs: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (G8)
• Sound Materials Society (Japan)
• Design for the Environment (EPA and
others)
• Green Chemistry
• Lean Manufacturing
• Sustainable Supply-Chain Management
• Eco-labeling
• Green Procurement
• Zero Waste
Box 7
STATES’ PROGRESS TOWARDS
MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
A number of states have ambitious
programs to move towards materials
management. One example is California’s
green chemistry program which requires
that the State identify chemicals of concern,
evaluate alternatives, and specify
regulatory responses where chemicals of
concern are found in products. Washington
and Maine have similar programs.
Chapter 1 | Page 16
With the SPC, EPA is
providing input on the
design of a label to inform
consumers about end?of?life
options.
EPA's National Vehicle and Fuel
Emissions Laboratory assists with transportation
issues associated with weight reduction and shape
reconfiguration.
EPA works with material manufacturers and
converters to reduce the environmental
impact of polymers and coatings.
EPA's Design for the
Environment program
assists with environmentally
preferable product
reformulation.
Product
Design and
Manufacture
Distribution
and Retail
Purchase
and Use
End of Life
Recovery
Material
Processing
EPA's Climate
Leaders and Green
Suppliers Network
programs assist
manufacturers with
reducing their GHG
and environmental
footprint.
To encourage end?
of?life recovery, the
Sustainable Packaging
Coalition (SPC) and the
CA Department of
Conservation are
working to improve:
recovery metrics,
information on
recovery technologies,
and consumer
communications.
EPA helped Wal?Mart
develop their packaging
scorecard which is serving as
a catalyst in redesigning
packaging resulting in source
reduction and reduced
transportation.
Resource
Extraction
Figure 5: Example of a Life-cycle Materials Management Approach for Packaging
Adapted from “Design Guidelines for Sustainable Packaging,” Sustainable Packaging Coalition, GreenBlue, 2006
Independent efforts to address the issues of climate change, energy conservation, and
water conservation miss opportunities for achieving maximum environmental impact,
because they do not also consider broader approaches to managing materials more
sustainably. Because materials have such a large impact on a wide variety of environmental
issues, integrated materials management approaches will yield significant benefits while
achieving more efficient resource use and cost savings.
A comprehensive materials management approach serves to direct environmental, product,
and resource policy to those areas where it will provide the greatest environmental benefit.
It will enable us to focus on those material flows which potentially cause the greatest harm
and where in the life cycle they occur. It also will allow us to determine which material flows
are overly wasteful, where they originate, and where they ultimately end up. It will also
help identify which activities or products are primarily responsible for these harmful flows,
and devise strategies that have the greatest likelihood of being environmentally and
economically effective.
Chapter 1 | Page 17
Chapter 2:
Building an Analytic Framework
While considering the idea of a comprehensive
materials management approach, the Vision
Workgroup recognized the importance of
identifying priorities and conducting a few well-
chosen demonstration projects to show the
value of this approach and gain greater insights
on integrating policies and programs around
materials management. The Workgroup also
recognized that any comprehensive materials
management strategy should build on an
analytical framework that accounts for the fact
that a few hundred raw materials are extracted or harvested from the environment and
subsequently transformed into thousands of final products by a highly complex and
intertwined system. As noted earlier, numerous environmental impacts arise as a
consequence of how this system of materials and products currently operates.
Developing the Framework
To formulate a materials management analytical framework, the Workgroup built on the
experiences of other organizations and initiatives. The Workgroup reviewed the efforts of
the European Commission, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development,
and other nations, seeking to prioritize materials, products or wastes. This body of
knowledge suggested the need to understand the life-cycle impacts of materials in order to
construct more interlocking and effective materials management policies. For example, the
European Commission (EC) conducted its Environmental Impacts of Products (EIPRO) study
to identify products which potentially cause the greatest life-cycle environmental impacts
across eight environmental impact categories such as global warming potential and human
toxicity. The EC is identifying ways to reduce life-cycle impacts and develop appropriate
policy measures to achieve reductions.
29
Evaluating the life-cycle environmental impacts of material use is important and can identify
which materials have the greatest overall potential impacts to humans and the
environment. However, the Workgroup felt it was important to go beyond environmental
impacts and to include resource use (materials, water, and energy) and material waste.
Examining all these aspects from a life-cycle perspective enables strategic targeting of
Chapter 2 | Page 18
policies to promote more efficient use of materials and reduce environmental impacts across
all stages of the material system.
Another important consideration when developing materials management strategies is
viewing the environmental aspects from more than one perspective across the material
system. As a point of comparison, the EIPRO study assessed the life-cycle impacts of
products consumed by households (often termed final consumption.) This meant all of the
impacts from all stages, from extraction of the raw materials through end-of-life, are
“passed on” and embedded in the final product sold to a household. This perspective
reveals final products that are familiar to consumers and that have the greatest life-cycle
impacts.
However, using a final consumption perspective may hide significant impacts of upstream
material stages, especially when the outputs of those stages become widely dispersed
across a large number of different final products. Each of those final products will have
separate material composition profiles and life cycles. For example, copper mining
potentially contributes significantly to environmental and human health impacts, uses a fair
amount of energy, water, and material, and produces quite a bit of waste. Using a product
or final consumption perspective, these potential impacts would be dispersed among the
thousands of products in which copper is used, such as currency, batteries, circuits,
industrial components, telecommunications equipment, roofing, household items, piping,
and a wide variety of electronic products. The life-cycle impacts associated with creating
those products would be captured, including the impacts of copper mining, but because
copper comprises such a small portion of the individual products, the impacts of copper
mining as a whole would be hidden.
Thus, it is important to include perspectives that can reveal environmentally problematic
upstream stages such as extraction (e.g., copper ore) or initial material processing (e.g.,
smelting) and middle stages such as manufacturing, as well as the final product. Evaluating
a material system through more than one perspective can yield dramatically different
results and better inform a materials management strategy.
In summary, the Workgroup identified the following components as integral in establishing
an analytical framework for materials management strategies:
Establishing the universe: Use the most complete dataset of materials, products, and
services whose relationships in an economy are well mapped.
Understanding all impacts, inputs, and outputs: Include the full range of
environmental aspects including environmental impacts, resource use (material, energy,
and water) and material waste. For environmental impacts, cover as many
environmental and human health impacts as possible.
Using perspectives to understand where the impacts are occurring: View the
material system from different perspectives to ensure impacts are fully revealed.
Chapter 2 | Page 19
Applying the Framework to the U.S. Economy
In applying this framework to identify potential candidates for demonstration projects, the
Workgroup created an approach using existing tools and data to produce a relative ranking
of the materials, products and services consumed in the US economy. The methodology
developed is based on the components identified above and is described in detail in the
Appendix (a separate document).
The universe established for this analysis was the 480 materials, products and services
included in the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) 1998 input/output (I/O) tables
(most recent year available when analysis done). These 480 materials, products and
services span all stages of the material system from extraction such as copper ore to final
consumption of products or provision of services such as jewelry or hospitals. The I/O
tables map the relationships of these materials, products and services to one another in the
U.S. economy. Also, the primary data source used in the analysis was the Comprehensive
Environmental Data Archive (CEDA 3.0) which uses the BEA I/O tables as its baseline list of
materials, products and services. The CEDA 3.0 tool was used in the EIPRO study and
enhanced to incorporate end-of-life.
For the environmental impacts and inputs and outputs, the Workgroup considered
thirteen environmental impacts included in CEDA: abiotic depletion, land use, global
warming, ozone layer depletion, human toxicity, freshwater aquatic toxicity, marine aquatic
toxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, freshwater sedimental ecotoxicity, marine sedimental
ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidation, acidification, and eutrophication. Further, material,
energy and water use and material waste were included. These became the 17 criteria on
which the 480 materials, products and services were relatively ranked. Although it may
appear that there are some redundancies among the 17 criteria, they each address an
important consideration in priority setting.
While CEDA was equipped to assess environmental impacts and energy use, it did not have
the ability to assess material and water use, or material waste disposed. Data for these
came from the World Resources Institute’s Material Flows Analysis database (material use
and waste) and the U.S. Geological Survey (water use). However, these data were
compiled using different classification schemes which meant that extensive cross-walking to
the BEA classification scheme was required. The Workgroup used innovative techniques for
allocating those data into the BEA’s list of 480 materials, products, and services. For
example, a WRI material may have had a direct relationship with a material in BEA’s lists
(e.g., WRI coal to BEA coal). In other cases, a WRI material was related to a number of
different products (e.g., WRI grain to a number of BEA commodities such as bread, meat
animals, etc).
Finally, the Workgroup examined the 480 materials, products and services from three
different perspectives referred to as “direct impact/resource use/waste,” “intermediate
consumption,” and “final consumption.” (See Figure 6.)
Chapter 2 | Page 20
D
D
D
D D
D
D
D
D
D+I
D+I
D+I?O
D+I?O
D+I?O
D
i
r
e
c
t
I
m
p
a
c
t
s
/
U
s
e
/
W
a
s
t
e
I
n
t
e
r
m
e
d
i
a
t
e
C
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
F
i
n
a
l
C
o
n
s
u
m
p
t
i
o
n
D
D
D
D+I
D+I
D+I
D =direct impact, use, or waste I =impact, use, or waste associated with inputs O =impact, use, or waste associated with outputs
D+I?O
D+I?O
D+I?O
D+I?O
D+I?O
• Measures direct environmental impacts, material, water and
energy use, and waste disposed at each point in the supply
chain; does not include embedded environmental impacts,
material, water, or energy use, or waste disposed.
• More likely than the other perspectives to highlight raw
materials and intermediate products at early stages in the
supply chain before outputs are widely dispersed throughout
the economy (e.g., copper) and there is little use as a final
product.
• Measures accumulated (direct and embedded) environmental
impacts, material, water and energy use, and waste disposed
at each point in the supply chain before they are “passed on”
to the next stage.
• This perspective allows transparent consideration of the
accumulated impacts, resource use, and waste associated with
intermediate products and processes before these aspects are
“passed on” to products consumed by final consumers
• Measures embedded environmental impacts, material, water
and energy use, and waste associated with final products;
traditional LCA approach.
• This perspective reveals the overall impacts associated with
final consumption.
Figure 6: U.S. Supply Chain Perspectives
The direct impact/resource use/waste disposed perspective examines what environmental
impacts, resource use and waste are occurring at each life-cycle stage of a material system;
nothing is embedded from other stages. This perspective potentially reveals where in a
material or product life cycle the greatest direct impacts occur (and those over which a
facility has direct control). Upstream stages such as extraction and harvesting are likely to
be revealed.
The intermediate consumption perspective examines all the accumulated life-cycle impacts
at each life-cycle stage before they are embedded and passed on to the next stage. This
perspective reveals where in a material system the greatest accumulated impacts, resource
use and waste occur, and is likely to reveal upstream activities (e.g., material processing
and manufacturing) and intermediate products.
The final consumption perspective “passes on” and embeds all impacts from across the
material system in the final products consumed. For this analysis, final consumers were
defined as both households and government. This perspective reveals which materials,
products and services consumed by households and government have the greatest life-cycle
impacts, resource use and waste.
Chapter 2 | Page 21
Once all the results were obtained, an applied vector analysis approach was used to produce
a relative ranking of the 480 materials, products and services in each of the three supply
chain perspectives.
It is important to recognize that the results produced by this analysis are not direct
measures of impacts or risk, but rather provide a relative ranking of materials, products,
and services potentially contributing significantly to environmental issues. Also, the 480
materials, products and services represent commodity groupings and thus the results
cannot be interpreted to single out any individual company or specific product as particularly
resource-intensive, wasteful or environmentally damaging.
Recognizing the complexities of the analysis, the Workgroup had it peer reviewed by
independent experts. The peer reviewers found the overall approach and results produced a
reasonable starting point for identifying materials, products, and services on which to focus.
They also provided several recommendations for improving the analysis. The Workgroup
followed-up on some of these recommendations.
What We Found
Table 1 presents the results of the Workgroup’s analysis of the U.S. consumptive economy.
The table is a compilation of the top 20 highest ranked materials, products and services
from each system perspective when ranked across all criteria. This process identified 37
materials, products and services. Just under half of the 37 ranked within the top 20 in only
one or two system perspectives. Because the analysis was conducted using 1998 data, we
conducted an analysis of significant market trends between 1998 and the present to
determine whether any adjustments should be made to the overall results. As a result,
“Computer and Data Processing Services” was added due to its profound growth.
Therefore, Table 1 contains a total of 38 materials, products and services.
The table presents the individual materials, products and services grouped into seven broad
categories: construction and development, food products and services, forestry, metals,
nonrenewable organics, textiles, and other products and services. They are grouped in a
manner to depict crude direct relationships (e.g., feed grains, meat animals, meat packing
plants, eating and drinking places). For each material, product and service, the table shows
the final rank for each perspective, as well as the environmental aspects contributing
significantly to its high ranking.
All of the 17 criteria proved important to the ranking outcomes, although certain criteria
tended to contribute more significantly to high rankings than others.
To demonstrate the merits of including all the criteria, a comparative examination of
rankings was performed to observe changes as more criteria groups were added. This was
done using the final consumption perspective. For example, results for a single criterion,
global warming, were compared to the results when all environmental impact criteria were
used, and then to the results when all seventeen criteria were used. For global warming, air
Chapter 2 | Page 22
transportation and meat packing plants ranked high and were close in terms of their
potential life-cycle global warming impacts. Addressing either from a life-cycle perspective
would achieve important GHG reductions. However, when the remaining environmental
impact criteria are included, the rank of meat packing plants rose significantly while air
transportation fell. When the resource use and material waste criteria are added, meat
packing plants maintained their high ranking position and air transportation rose, but
remained significantly lower than meat packing plants. Thus, if meat packing plants are
addressed from a life-cycle perspective, significant benefits potentially could be realized
related to land use, freshwater aquatic ecotoxicity, photochemical oxidation, terrestrial
ecotoxicity and eutrophication, in addition to global warming. Addressing air transportation,
on the other hand, potentially offers only energy use and global warming benefits.
The table also demonstrates the importance of using several perspectives. Different
materials, products and services rank high depending on which perspective is used and
these materials, product and services generally fall within different life-cycle stages.
Extraction and harvesting tend to rank high under the direct impact/resource use/waste
perspective, while finished goods and services rank high under the final consumption
perspective. The intermediate consumption perspective tends to rank high in the material
processing and manufacturing stages, and less likely to rank high in services. Each
perspective highlights potentially significant problematic materials, products, or services
that the other perspectives missed.
The Workgroup was also interested in looking at the results related specifically to
greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from all 3 perspectives. The results showed that when
looking at direct GHG emissions, the upstream stages were highly ranked – for example,
feed grains, and blast furnaces/steel mills. However, when looking at embedded GHG
emissions, the downstream stages are highly ranked such as hospitals, meat packing plants,
and automotive repair shops and services.
Conclusion
The Workgroup believes that this examination of the 480 materials, products, and services
across seventeen environmental criteria and from three different material system
perspectives provides a reasonable narrowing of the economy to identify a pool of potential
candidate materials, products and services which are important enough to be considered for
projects to demonstrate the value of using life-cycle materials management. However, the
Workgroup recognizes that an analysis such as this gives rise to many limitations and
uncertainties such as correlations between criteria, the difference in level of commodity
aggregation that exists for 480 materials, products and services examined, and the varying
quality levels of the data used. Nevertheless, the 38 materials, products and services
identified in Table 1 are likely to represent significant contributors to environmental issues
in the U.S.
Chapter 2 | Page 23
Chapter 2 | Page 24
This life-cycle analysis of the U.S. economy provides a rough sense of what impacts are
occurring, where they are occurring, and what demands are behind them through its rather
complete set of criteria and perspectives, limitations and uncertainties notwithstanding.
This analysis also enables us to select demonstration projects that focus on particular types
of materials management challenges. These challenges can include trying to address
materials that become highly dispersed in the economy (e.g., aluminum); products or
services that are a convergence of highly dispersed upstream materials (e.g., electronics,
hospitals); or materials from each type of raw material category (e.g., agriculture, metals
and minerals, nonrenewable organics). Each of these cases would have very different
cycling pathways through the economy, from almost circular such as metals to essentially
linear such as food. In addition, the process for selecting the demonstration projects can
take advantage of the crude “supply chain” relationships that can be observed in Table 1
(e.g., feed grains, meat animals, meat packing plants, and meat consumers).
Regardless of how projects are selected, they should be designed to address the entire
materials system. The analysis can serve as an initial guide on which impacts need to be
addressed, where they are in the supply chain, and which parties should participate in
crafting a materials management strategy.
Beyond identifying demonstration projects, this analysis may offer interesting insights on
the value of present program activities, as well as any priority-setting endeavors around a
particular environmental impact such as GHG emissions. The analysis performed for this
report can serve well as a model for environmental analysis in the future.
Table 1: Summary of Top-Ranked Materials, Products, and Services
Final Rank Environmental Aspects Significantly
(1)
Contributing to Final Rank
Material, Product, or Service
DI IC FC
Direct Impact/Resource
Use/Waste Perspective
Intermediate Consumption
Perspective
Final Consumption Perspective
Dairy farm products 19 – – LUC
Poultry and eggs 20 – – LUC
Meat animals 6 6 – LUC LUC, FAETP, TETP, EP
Food grains 13 – – LUC, EP
Feed grains 9 15 – LUC, FAETP, TETP, EP, MU ADP, LUC, FAETP, TETP, EP
Miscellaneous crops 16 – – FAETP, TETP, EP
Meat packing plants – 11 7 LUC, FAETP, TETP, EP LUC, FAETP, TETP
Poultry slaughtering and processing – – 17 LUC,
Eating and drinking places – 16 5 LUC, GWP, FAETP, TETP, POCP, EP LUC, GWP, ODP, HTP, FAETP, MAETP, TETP, FSETP, MSETP,
POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW, EU
Food preparations, n.e.c. – – 19 FAETP,TETP,EP
F
o
o
d
P
r
o
d
u
c
t
s
&
S
e
r
v
i
c
e
s
Fluid milk – – 20 LUC
Cotton 2 2 – FAETP, TETP, EP FAETP, TETP, EP
Apparel made from purchased
materials
– 13 2 FAETP, TETP, EP ODP, HTP, FAETP, TETP, MSETP, EP
T
e
x
t
i
l
e
s
Broadwoven fabric mills and fabric
finishing plants
– 10 – FAETP, TETP, EP
Coal 5 9 – ADP, MU, MW ADP, MU, MW
Crude petroleum and natural gas 4 4 – ADP, GWP, POCP ADP, GWP, POCP, AP, EP
Industrial inorganic and organic
chemicals
3 3 – ODP, HTP, MSETP, MW ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, EP, MW
Petroleum refining 8 5 3 MU, MW ADP, GWP, POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW ADP, GWP, ODP, POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW
Electric services (utilities) 1 1 1 GWP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP, POCP,
AP, EP, WU, EU
ADP, GWP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP,
POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW, WU, EU
ADP, GWP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP, POCP, AP, EP, MU, MW,
WU, EU
N
o
n
r
e
n
e
w
a
b
l
e
O
r
g
a
n
i
c
s
Natural gas distribution 15 14 12 MU, MW ADP, MU, MW ADP, MW
Blast furnaces and steel mills – 17 – GWP, HTP, POCP, MW, EU
Primary aluminum 18 20 – ODP, HTP, MAETP, FSEPT, MSEPT ODP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP, MSETP
M
e
t
a
l
s
Motor vehicles and passenger car
bodies
– 12 4 GWP, ODP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP,
MSETP, POCP, EP, EU
ADP, GWP, ODP, HTP, FAETP, MAETP, TETP, FSETP, MSETP,
POCP, AP, EP, MW, EU
Chapter 2 | Page 25
Chapter 2 | Page 26
Final Rank Environmental Aspects Significantly
(1)
Contributing to Final Rank
Material, Product, or Service
DI IC FC
Direct Impact/Resource
Use/Waste Perspective
Intermediate Consumption
Perspective
Final Consumption Perspective
Dimension, crushed and broken stone 14 – – MU
Sand and gravel 17 – – MU
New residential 1 unit structures,
nonfarm
10 8 8 MU BWP, ODP, HTP, FSETP, MSETP,
POCP, MU
GWP, ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, EP, MU, MW
Other new construction – – 13 GWP, ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, MU
Owner?occupied dwellings – – 11 GWP,OCP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, EP, MU
New highways, bridges, and other
horizontal construction
– – 10 HTP, POCP, MU
C
o
n
s
t
r
u
c
t
i
o
n
&
D
e
v
e
l
o
p
m
e
n
t
New office, industrial and commercial
buildings construction
– – 16 ODP, MTP, MSETP, POCP, MU
Pulp mills 11 – – HTP, MSETP
F
o
r
e
s
t
r
y
Paper and paperboard mills 7 7 – HTP, MSETP HTP, MSETP
Computer and data processing
services: including own?account
software
(2)
_ _ _
Photographic equipment and
supplies
(3)
12 – 14 HTP, MSETP HTP, MSETP
Wholesale trade – 19 15 GWP, ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP, EU ODP, HTP, MSETP, POCP
Retail trade, except eating and
drinking
– – 6 ADP, GWP, ODP, HTP, MAETP, FSETP, MSETP, POCP, AP, EP,
MU, MW, WU, EU
Hospitals – – 9 GWP, ODP, HTP, TETP, FESTP, MSETP, POCP, EP, MW, EU O
t
h
e
r
P
r
o
d
s
&
S
e
r
v
i
c
e
s
Real estate agents, managers,
operators, and lessors
– 18 18 GWP, HTP, POCP, MU ODP, HTP, POCP, MU
NOTES: (1) Significantly means value greater than two standard deviations from the mean.
(2) The supplemental markets trends analysis suggests that if relative output were adjusted from 1998 to 2007 levels, the “computer and data processing services” category would rank as high as second from the
final consumption perspective. For 1998 levels, it ranks 26th in the final consumption perspective with marine sedimental ecotoxicity being the significantly contributing environmental aspect.
(3) The supplemental market trends analysis suggests that if relative output were adjusted from 1998 to 2007 levels, the “photographic equipment and supplies” category would be ranked below the top 20 from
the final consumption perspective.
KEY:
DI = Direct impact/resource use/waste
IC = Intermediate consumption
FC = Final consumption
• Shading shows the top 10 highest ranks for each perspective.
• ? = ranked below top 20.
Environmental Impacts
ADP = abiotic depletion potential
AP = acidification potential
EP = eutrophication potential
FAETP = freshwater aquatic ecotox. potential
FSETP = freshwater sediment ecotox. potential
GWP = global warming potential
HTP = human toxicity potential
TETP = terrestrial ecotox potential
LUC = land use
MAETP = marine aquatic ecotox. potential
MSETP = marine sediment ecotox potential
ODP = ozone depletion potential
POCP = photochemical oxidation potential
Resource Use and Waste
EU = Energy Used
MU = Materials Used
MW = Material Waste
WU = Water Used
Chapter 3:
Workgroup Recommendations for Achieving Sustainable
Materials Management
The recommendations are an integrated plan that provides a “roadmap” of tasks to promote
materials management within EPA, state and tribal environmental programs. They call for
immediate actions along three parallel paths.
First, we recommend steps that EPA and state environmental agencies can take to
promote integrated materials management, building on current programs including core
regulatory programs.
Second, we recommend that EPA and state environmental agencies move quickly to
enhance their capacity for future life-cycle materials management.
Third, we recommend accelerating an active, multifaceted conversation on life-cycle
materials management with other parts of the federal government, state government,
industry, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the public.
Along these three paths, several cross-cutting themes underlie a national movement
towards sustainable materials management.
Government itself does not manage most materials, but its collective actions can have a
strong impact on how materials are managed throughout the economy.
EPA, state, tribal, and local environmental programs need to align and integrate their
approaches, where possible, to move beyond existing program and product “silos.”
Government agencies at all levels need to work together to use a variety of regulatory,
economic, information and collaboration tools to accomplish the shift to materials
management.
Government environmental agencies need to engage across administrative, geographical,
governmental and stakeholder boundaries to develop effective materials management
strategies. These engagements are particularly needed to achieve changes early in the life-
cycle of materials.
The recommendations focus on materials management in the year 2020—eleven years from
now. This time frame is intended to emphasize that the changes described in this report
will take longer than a few years to achieve. But it is possible—and necessary—to begin
now.
Chapter 3 | Page 27
RECOMMENDATION 1:
Promote efforts to manage materials and products on a
life-cycle basis.
1.1 Select a few materials/products
for an integrated life-cycle
approach, and launch
demonstration projects.
Working with the Environmental Council of the
States (ECOS), the Association of State and
Territorial Solid Waste Management Officials
(ASTSWMO), and other groups as appropriate,
EPA should select a few materials and/or
products where an integrated life-cycle
materials management approach could
possibly achieve significant benefits for the
environment and reduce resource use. The
selection should be based on the analysis
described in Chapter 2/Table 1 of the top
ranked materials/products and on expressions
of interest and likely collaboration by
potentially affected stakeholders and key
decision makers.
Box 8
QUESTIONS FOR MATERIAL/PRODUCT
WORKGROUPS TO ADDRESS
1. What are the significant
environmental impacts associated
with this material or product (e.g.,
where in the life cycle do the
impacts occur, what processes drive
these impacts, and what type of
opportunities exist to reduce these
impacts)? Also, are there potential
risks of short or difficult-to-obtain
supplies?
2. What is currently being done to
address the impacts associated with
this material/product?
3. If all impacts are not being
addressed, what more can we do
(e.g., fill information gaps, do more
with less, find substitutes for toxic
inputs, close the loop)?
4. What targets/strategies for
improvement are advised? How
should progress be measured?
Once demonstration projects are selected,
EPA should convene and empower EPA/state
workgroups to develop frameworks to reduce
environmental impacts of the
materials/products throughout the life cycle.
These groups should start by examining
ongoing efforts (in government and/or private
sector) and consider questions such as those
in Box 8 to develop initial frameworks that:
1. strategically address life-cycle impacts
with ambitious targets;
2. integrate existing and new efforts across
environmental media and programs (e.g.,
air, water, toxics, waste);
Chapter 3 | Page 28
3. use a variety of regulatory and non-
regulatory tools; and
Box 9
OPPORTUNITIES FOR WASTE AND
CHEMICALS PROGRAMS
1. Set realistic targets to transition
towards increased use of secondary
materials, reduced material and toxic
intensity, as well as reduced waste,
toxic and physical insults to the
environment.
2. Find ways to prevent key
materials/product streams from
becoming waste in the first place (e.g.,
consider use of RFID tags to improve
the recycling, reuse and refurbishment
of materials in consumer products).
3. Work with the Department of
Commerce—Manufacturing Extension
Partnership to expand lean
manufacturing support to small and
medium enterprises to include
reduction in material throughput and
other aspects of life-cycle materials
management.
4. Encourage the trend that we see among
leading waste management companies
to transform themselves into full-
service life-cycle materials management
advisors and service providers.
5. Initiate energy recovery once reuse,
recycling, and composting have been
performed or are shown to be not
viable.
6. Incorporate life-cycle materials
management principles in all EPA P2
strategy and program guidance
documents that are generated.
Explicitly expand the agency’s concept
of pollution prevention to embrace
system-level life-cycle materials
management, not just source reduction
at the facility level.
4. account for the full cost of products and
waste.
EPA and the states should seek stakeholder
input on the frameworks and work with
interested stakeholders to develop shared
action plans. Action plans should consider
creating multi-stakeholder teams capable of
sustained and adaptive management for the
pilot material or product (e.g., building on the
model of the Quicksilver Caucus for mercury).
They also should share information and
insights with groups that are already working
on those materials/products.
1.2 Expand the focus of existing
environmental programs to
encompass life-cycle materials
management more fully.
EPA should work with states to expand the
focus of the “mainline” environmental
programs, especially the solid and hazardous
waste and chemicals programs, to encompass
the complete life cycle of materials more
fully. At a minimum, EPA and states should
identify specific opportunities to realign,
refocus, or expand their efforts to promote
life-cycle materials management. (See Box
9.) This should include:
Examine regulations to find ways to
reduce barriers to life-cycle material
management and promote resource
efficiency.
Encourage greater recovery and reuse of
critical materials.
Chapter 3 | Page 29
Harness strategic planning, national guidance, budget, and performance metric systems
to facilitate materials management. (See 2.4 below.)
In addition, EPA and the states need to take the Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC) to
the next stage by creating more emphasis on interventions earlier in the material life cycle.
(See Box 10.)
1.3 Promote specific materials management approaches that can help
address climate change.
EPA, state, tribal and local environmental agencies should work to integrate climate change
and life-cycle materials management policies by emphasizing to decision-makers the
connection between GHG emissions and materials. EPA and states also should pursue
strategies that reduce GHG emissions through materials management approaches that
balance GHG with other environmental impacts.
1.4 Promote greener products, product stewardship, and product-to-
service transformations.
EPA should more actively promote the availability of environmentally preferable products by
working to improve product design, reduce impacts associated with product supply chains,
and increase product recovery. EPA and state waste and chemical programs should
significantly expand their efforts to identify and encourage the use of products that are
greener throughout their life cycle. This should include a number of specific efforts, such
as:
Encourage disclosure of all materials included in products.
Work with states, manufacturers, retailers, and institutional buyers to develop EPA-
endorsed life cycle-based, multi-attribute green product labeling standards for multiple
product categories, with emphasis on priority materials/products.
Use Design for the Environment (DfE), Green Chemistry, Green Engineering, and green
product standards/labeling initiatives within EPA waste, chemicals and innovations
programs as drivers for new product design and production technologies, and product
designs that use materials more efficiently.
Work with states, manufacturers, retailers, NGO’s, and others to identify efficient ways
to take back and recover products at end-of-life.
Facilitate “business to business” approaches that promote material reuse, such as
material and waste exchanges, “by-product synergy” and “eco-industrial” relationships.
Chapter 3 | Page 30
Promote business models that transform the sale of products to the sale of services and
help ensure that such business models maximize materials use efficiency and other
environmental improvements.
Box 10
THE RESOURCE CONSERVATION CHALLENGE AND MATERIALS MANAGEMENT
In 2002, EPA launched the Resource Conservation Challenge (RCC). The RCC was an early effort to
respond to the RCRA Vision by placing renewed emphasis on RCRA mandates to prevent pollution, and
conserve natural resources and energy through more efficient materials management.
The RCC currently emphasizes four major resource areas: 1) municipal solid waste reuse and recycling; 2)
green initiatives, such as reducing the life-cycle environmental impacts of electronics, and promoting
green building construction and retrofitting of existing buildings; 3) industrial materials reuse and
recycling; and 4) reduction of toxic chemicals in products and waste.
Most RCC initiatives focus on the beneficial use of post-consumer and post-industrial materials, either by
recycling, composting, or waste-to-energy. Putting to good use materials that would otherwise be disposed
is an important element of a materials management strategy. Indeed, building an understanding of the
value of material wastes and the needed infrastructure for their return to our economy is a necessary first
step towards a materials management transformation.
The RCC also includes some initiatives that point more upstream in the materials and product cycles by
encouraging materials substitution and eco-design of products. For example, the National Partnership for
Environmental Priorities (NPEP)—a partnership between EPA’s waste and chemicals programs—calls on
partners to reduce the use of priority chemicals. The Electronic Products Environmental Assessment Tool
(EPEAT), another waste and chemicals program partnership, challenges electronics manufacturers to
remove toxics, use recycled content, and to make these products more energy efficient and easier to
recycle or refurbish. The Sustainable Packaging Coalition aims to encourage a sustainable flow of materials
through design guidance and tools to guide the selection of more sustainable materials. The Lifecycle
Building Challenge calls for buildings to be designed for adaptation (so that buildings can be repurposed
rather than torn down and rebuilt) and deconstruction (so building materials can be reused).
A fully-realized materials management strategy will not only address recovery and beneficial use of wastes
in industrial and biological cycles, but will also emphasize powerful upstream efforts to reduce and change
materials use, such as: 1) full recognition of the life-cycle impacts of the use of certain materials; 2) using
less materials in the first place; 3) substituting safer and renewable materials in place of toxic or non-
renewable materials; and 4) substituting services for products (to provide maximum utility with minimal
material inputs and environmental impacts).
This kind of thinking requires us to ask very different questions. For example, we often ask “What should
we do with scrap tires, or electronics, or fluorescent lights when they need to be disposed?” But the
question for the future may need to be: Is there a way to eliminate this waste completely, to provide
these same services with fewer resources and no adverse environmental impacts? Can we do this by
substituting something else that does not wear out so fast, can be reused, that can be fully or almost fully
recovered and repurposed so that it never becomes waste? These kinds of questions, some of which are
already being asked, can really “change the game.” They can generate untold innovation, improve lives,
meet society’s needs without overexploiting resources (renewable or non-renewable), and keep our
economic activity within the absorptive capacity of the environment.
Chapter 3 | Page 31
Work with producers, retailers, the waste collection/recycling industry, recyclers, and
local governments to develop the materials collection and processing infrastructure
needed to support life-cycle materials management.
Improve the amount and type of consumer information available to support green
purchasing.
» Encourage consolidation of green product claims under fewer, more comprehensive
and trusted product labels to reduce consumer confusion and “greenwashing.”
» Review and update government procurement practices at all levels to support life
cycle-based product standards. Consider allowing companies who supply superior
“green” products to advertise that they supply these products to the U.S.
Government.
1.5 Strengthen market signals to reduce waste and other adverse
environmental impacts throughout the life cycle of materials.
Governments at all levels should work with industry and other stakeholders to use market
signals to promote better materials management throughout the life cycle. Possibilities
include:
Charge more for disposal and less for recycling; charge for disposal by amount disposed
(“pay as you throw”).
Charge emissions and permit fees.
Reward citizens/communities that recycle with rebates or coupons (e.g., Recycle Bank).
Limit landfilling and incineration of recyclable/compostable materials.
Chapter 3 | Page 32
RECOMMENDATION 2:
Build capacity and integrate materials management
approaches in existing government programs.
2.1 Establish and improve databases
to promote materials
management.
EPA should establish a panel that includes
stakeholders and outside experts to advise on
materials management information priorities,
including types of information needed, key
indicators to track, how to make U.S.
information compatible with information being
generated in other countries, and how to get
started in developing the necessary data sets.
This process should be open and should invite public input. (See Box 11.) EPA should then
establish an EPA/state workgroup to follow up on the panel’s advice and create a plan for a
broadly useful set of indicators for life-cycle material management.
EPA also should create new partnerships with other government agencies, the research
community, and the private sectors to collect, improve, harmonize, and disseminate quality
data that is critical for life-cycle materials management. This should include establishing a
better mechanism than now exists for sharing data between EPA and states.
2.2 Improve decision tools to support life-cycle materials management.
EPA should work with states to create two decision support tools to support life-cycle
materials management:
Create a business decision support tool that connects economic and environmental
performance associated with materials management (including carbon footprint
reduction, as well as increased innovation and competitiveness).
Create a consumer decision support tool that calculates the human health and
environmental benefits associated with buying less material-intensive products or
services. The tool should have the ability to display information on product-specific
material use and provide performance comparisons.
Chapter 3 | Page 33
These tools should focus on depicting the energy/economic value of materials to help guide
fees and other economic incentives that encourage sound materials management and
discourage sending materials to disposal.
Box 11
CRITICAL DATA SETS FOR EFFECTIVE AND SUCCESSFUL LIFE-CYCLE MATERIALS
MANAGEMENT
• Material Flow Accounts to track the movement of materials from extraction to manufacturing,
product use, reuse/recycling, and eventual disposal, showing emissions to the environment.
Recommended by the National Academy of Sciences, as well as OECD. A growing number of
nations have regularly-updated official Material Flow Accounts, but the U.S. has only
prototypes.
• Life-cycle inventories and life-cycle assessment models to enable industry, consumers, and
government to analyze and understand the life-cycle impacts of products, both easily and in a
standard, comparable manner.
• Data that more fully characterize chemical content of materials/products, toxicity, chemical
emissions, and waste generation.
• Data on critical minerals to enable industry and government planning for using key minerals
whose supply may be uncertain. Recommended by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences.
• Data on water use associated with the life cycles of materials and products, to enable business
and government planning in the water-constrained situations we find now and expect to
encounter more frequently in the future.
• Data that connect the movement of materials, goods, and services in our economy to the
environment; such data should be available for use at several levels, from national to state.
The Comprehensive Environmental Data Archive (CEDA) which was used by the 2020 Vision
Workgroup is a leading candidate for such a database.
All these initiatives will require the support and cooperation (political, technical, and resource) of
other public and private organizations. EPA can not undertake them alone.
2.3 Expand research and innovations support programs to promote
materials management.
Research and innovation will be critical to giving government agencies and businesses the
information they need to implement materials management approaches. More work is
needed in a number of areas including the following.
Expand the materials-related research described in EPA’s Sustainability Research
Agenda.
Chapter 3 | Page 34
Expand research on life-cycle impacts of
new materials and technologies (e.g.,
nanotechnology, biomimicry, enzymes).
Work with other federal agencies to
expand science and policy research to
enable better global management of
critical materials, following the NAS
recommendations in their report,
“Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S.
Economy” (2007).
2.4 Emphasize materials
management in EPA and state
processes and procedures.
EPA has a number of opportunities to
immediately begin to emphasize materials
management in Agency processes and
procedures. These include:
Augment EPA regulatory development
guidance to encourage consideration of
full life cycles and all types of impacts and
externalities in the analysis for each
regulation. This should include exploring ways to integrate life-cycle materials
management considerations into economic and cost-benefit analysis. At present, such
analyses generally focus on the most direct impacts of an action, and not life-cycle
impacts.
Box 12
INTEGRATED PERMITTING IN THE
EUROPEAN UNION
Member countries of the European Union
(E.U.) are implementing a new Integrated
Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC)
permitting system. Under this system,
environmental permits for large and
complex industrial facilities must address
the entire footprint of a facility’s operations.
This includes not only the parameters
traditionally regulated in the U.S.
(emissions and discharges to air, water and
land), but also the selection and use of all
materials that serve as inputs into each
industrial process.
On an ongoing basis operators are expected
to evaluate the use of materials and where
possible minimize their environmental
impacts. The “footprint” focus of E.U.
integrated permits also means that
environmental standards—best available
techniques— apply to the use of natural
resources such as water and energy.
(j)
Consider ways for EPA and states to use the permitting process to encourage life-cycle
materials management. (See Box 12.)
Incorporate consideration of life-cycle materials management in EPA program
evaluations, wherever appropriate.
Encourage all current and future EPA and state partnership programs to address the full
life cycle of materials, not just one stage.
Revise EPA’s Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) mission statement,
goals, and strategic plan to emphasize that the Agency will be a leader in promoting
sustainability and materials management. Make sustainability central to EPA’s mission,
and emphasize materials management targets and actions.
Chapter 3 | Page 35
2.5 Support and reward federal, state, tribal, and local champions for
materials management and encourage collaboration.
EPA should bring attention to successful materials management efforts, encourage staff and
managers in EPA and state, tribal and local government agencies to further materials
management concepts, and promote and reward collaboration. There are a number of
specific opportunities to move towards these goals including the following.
Promote collaboration and partnership on life-cycle materials management between the
Agency and states, especially through ECOS and ASTSWMO. Life-cycle materials
management should be part of joint EPA/state environmental strategies.
Motivate staff throughout the federal and state governments to address the challenges
of materials management by providing consistent resources, attention, support, and
recognition.
Focus EPA’s life-cycle materials management efforts and engage broader participation
using multiple groups across the Agency, especially EPA’s Innovation Action Council
(IAC) and the Multi-Media Pollution Prevention (M2P2) Forum around specific, cross-
cutting materials management issues such as labeling for products.
Consult with the Tribal Operations Committee and Local Government Advisory
Committee to plan the best ways to work with tribes and local governments on materials
management.
Work with federal and state agencies to create proactive hiring and training strategies to
build the social marketing and social science skills, and engineering expertise, needed to
support materials management.
Adjust EPA and state recognition programs to reward superior life-cycle materials
management efforts, including superior product design, or create new programs to
recognize these efforts.
Chapter 3 | Page 36
RECOMMENDATION 3:
Accelerate the broad, ongoing public dialogue on life-
cycle materials management.
3.1 Stimulate a national conversation about materials management,
engaging multiple networks.
EPA should use its convening power to bring multiple parties together to advance a national
conversation about materials management. There are a number of specific opportunities for
this, including the following.
Develop an EPA-wide materials management communications plan and encourage state
agencies to develop similar plans.
Work with states, tribes, local environmental agencies, businesses, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs), consumer groups, and the academic community to engage the
general public in a dialogue on the environmental impacts of consumption and the need
for more sustainable materials management.
» Develop a clear articulation of the urgent environmental and economic issues we face
with respect to materials and products, and why life-cycle materials management
approaches are needed.
» Share this statement with the public and invite public input by a variety of means,
including an electronic dialogue.
Consider establishing a national advisory group (a “Materials Innovation Council”) to
advise on life-cycle materials management strategies. Include states, tribes, local
environmental agencies, business and industry, environmental and public interest
groups, and the academic community. The Council could be part of the National Advisory
Council on Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT), or free standing. Their initial
assignment might be to assess and comment on the materials management strategies
currently underway in EPA program offices.
Consider what additional statutory authorities (if any) are needed for EPA and the states
to implement robust life-cycle materials management programs using both regulatory
and non-regulatory approaches.
Use the Environmental Executive Order 13423 and OMB’s Environmental Stewardship
Scorecard to initiate a broader dialogue with federal agencies on actions they can take to
support life-cycle materials management.
Chapter 3 | Page 37
3.2 Open a dialogue on economic instruments to encourage better
materials management.
Linking materials management choices to their economic implications and using economic
policy to better promote materials management will be important to integrating materials
management into the mainstream. There are a number of specific opportunities including
the following.
Work with other federal agencies to examine the full environmental impact of taxes and
subsidies, and their impacts on competitiveness and ensure that taxes and subsidies put
recycled materials on the same or better footing as virgin materials.
Work with other federal agencies to consider creating and promoting an alternative
measure of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) that reflects the value of protecting the
environment and conserving resources.
3.3 Create ways to share knowledge on materials management.
One of the most powerful things EPA can do to further materials management is to make
clear and accurate information about the benefits of materials management approaches
available. This includes both information on best practices, case studies and lessons
learned, and the basic data and decision tools needed to implement materials management
concepts. EPA has a number of opportunities to share knowledge and information on
materials management including the following:
Create an internet-accessible network of information resources (e.g., data, decision
support tools, best practices) on materials management. The network should have
nodes for federal government, state government, businesses, NGOs, academia, and
communities, which allow easy movement of information and facilitation of action
between and among nodes. EPA should expand its work with the Department of
Commerce and its Manufacturing Extension Partnership to help on this effort.
Encourage institutions of higher education to incorporate systems and materials
management training across disciplines (from chemistry to engineering to business).
Share knowledge, best practices, and technology related to materials management,
product policy, and waste prevention efforts with other countries and learn from their
efforts. In particular:
» Expand U.S support for the Organization for Economic Cooperation and
Development’s work on resource efficiency/productivity and sustainable materials
management and for the G-8’s work on 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse, Recycle).
Chapter 3 | Page 38
» Support efforts of international organizations and research institutes to characte
international flows of materials.
Actively pursue the U.S.–Canada partnership on Sustainable Consumption and
Production (SCP) under the United Nati
rize
»
ons Environment Program (UNEP). Contribute
r
rograms on SCP.
ed
for or created by reuse, remanufacturing, and/or recycling.
» Involve state governments in international efforts where appropriate and feasible.
to the UNEP Marrakech Process to support SCP efforts and produce a global 10-Yea
Framework of P
» Advocate that the U.S. join the UNEP International Panel for Sustainable Resource
Management.
» Increase support for U.S. Government efforts to promote free trade in goods destin
Chapter 3 | Page 39
Endnotes
1
Matthews, Emily, et al. Weight of Nations: Material Outflows from Industrial Economies. World Resource
Institute. Washington, DC, 2000. p. v.
2
Rogich, Donald, et al., Material Flows in the United States: A Physical Accounting of the U.S. Industrial Economy,
World Resources Institute, Washington, DC, 2008, p10.
3
United Nations, Report of the Conference on Environment and Development (Agenda 21). 1992.
4
U.S. EPA. “Beyond RCRA: Waste and Materials Management in the Year 2020.” 2002. Online:
.
5
International Partnerships for Sustainable Resource Management. Exploring Elements for a Workplan (2008-
1020). UNEP/IRM/SC/0711/06
6
USGS. “Materials Flow and Sustainability.” June 2008. Online: .
7
Speth, James. The Bridge at the End of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to
Sustainability. Yale University Press. 2008. 1-2.
8
Barker, Terry, et al. “Technical Summary.” Climate Change 2007: Mitigation. Contribution of Working Group III
to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [B. Metz, O. R. Davidson, P.
R. Bosch, R. Dave, L. A. Meyer (eds)], Cambridge University Press. 2007. 27.
9
Speth, James op. cit. p. 22.
10
World Wildlife Fund, Zoological Society of London, and Global Footprint Network. “Living Planet Report.” 2008.
Online: .
11
World Wildlife Fund, Zoological Society of London, and Global Footprint Network. “Living Planet Report.” 2008.
Online: .
12
Matthews, Emily, et al., op. cit. p. xi.
13
See, for instance, Matt Richtel and Kate Galbraith, “Back at Junk Value, Recyclables Are Piling Up,” New York
Times, December 8, 2008,http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/business/08recycle.html?hp , accessed
December 23, 2008.
14
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, “Let’s Call It Resource Productivity, and Let’s Be Bold,” presentation at the OECD-
UNEP Conference on Resource Productivity, 23-25 April 2008, Paris, France, slides available athttp://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/45/41/40677116.pdf , accessed December 23, 2008.
15
Matos, Grecia, and Lorie Wagner. “Consumption of Materials in the United States, 1900–1995.” Online:
.
16
Matos, Grecia, and Lorie Wagner. “Consumption of Materials in the United States, 1900–1995.” Online:
.
17
Wagner, Lorie. “Materials in the Economy—Material Flows, Scarcity, and the Environment.” U.S. Geological
Survey Circular 1221. 2002. Online : . 4.
18
National Academies Press. “Minerals, Critical Minerals, and the U.S. Economy.” 2008. Online:
.
19
World Wildlife Fund, Zoological Society of London, and Global Footprint Network. Living Planet Report 2008. 2.
20
World Wildlife Fund, Zoological Society of London, and Global Footprint Network. Living Planet Report 2008. 3.
21
U.S. EPA, OSWER, OCPA. Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Materials and Land
Management Practices. (Not yet released).
22
U.S. EPA, Office of Solid Waste (5306P). “Municipal Solid Waste in The United States: 2007 Facts and Figures.”
EPA530-R-08-010. November 2008. Online: .
23
Matthews, et al, op. cit.. p.14.
24
A. Adriaanse et al., Resource Flows: The Material Basis of Industrial Economies, a joint publication of the World
Resources Institute (WRI), the Wuppertal Institute, the Netherlands Ministry of Housing, Spatial Planning, and
the Environment, and the National Institute for Environmental Studies (WRI, Washington, D.C., 1997), p 1.
Online:
25
Matthews, et al., op. cit. p. v.
26
“World Wildlife Federation. “Living Planet Report.” 2008. Online:
.
27
National Resource Council of the National Academy. Minerals, Critical Minerals and the U.S. Economy, 2007.
Endnotes | Page 40
28
Jim Fava, “Sustainable manufacturing and distribution and International co-operation and partnerships,”
presentation at the OECD-UNEP Conference on Resource Productivity, 23-25 April 2008, Paris, France. Online: accessed December 23, 2008.
29http://ec.europa.eu/environment/ipp/pdf/eipro_report.pdf.
Text Box Sources
(a)
U.S. EPA, OSWER, OCPA. Opportunities to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions through Materials and Land
Management Practices. (Not yet released).
(b)
USGS. “Materials Flow and Sustainability.” June 2008. Online: .
(c)
Engelman, Robert. “Fertility Falls, Population Rises, Future Uncertain.” Vital Signs Online. WorldWatch Institute.
March 12, 2008. Online:
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency. “International Coal Consumption Data: Selected
Countries, Most Recent Annual Estimates, 1980-2007.” October 17, 2008. Online:
U.S. Department of Energy, Energy Information Agency. “Table 2.1: World Oil Balance, 2004-2008.” November
7, 2008. Online: www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/ipsr/t21.xls
Michael Brower and Warren Leon, The Consumer’s Guide to Effective Environmental Choices, Three Rivers Press.
1999, p. 4-5.
(d)
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Recommendation of the Council on Resource
Productivity, 20 March 2008, Paris accessed August 4,
2008
(e)
Group of Eight (G8), Kobe 3R Action Plan, G8 Environment Ministers Meeting, 24-26 May 2008
accessed August 4, 2008.
(f)
G8, G8 Hokkaido Toyako Summit Leaders Declaration, Hokkaido Toyako, 8 July 2008, paragraph 38.
accessed August 4, 2008
(g)http://www.icmm.com/page/1389/our-work/work-programs/articles/materials-stewardship
(h)http://www.wbcsdcement.org
(i)
http://www.keystone.org/spp/env-sustain_ag.html
(j)
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, An In-Depth Look at the United Kingdom Integrated Permitting System,
Washington DC, 2008 accessed December 23, 2008.
Endnotes | Page 41
doc_900103563.pdf