Investigation of The Relationship Between the Changes in Consumption of Macronutrients and Raw Materials with Economic Growth Among the Visegrad Countries Between 1993 and 2018

Due to the cancellation of standards developed before 1992 that regulate the requirements for raw materials and products of the woodworking industry, the norms of output of timber from dust raw materials have lost their relevance in Ukraine since January 2019. In particular, the incongruity of the number of quality classes (varieties), the difference in quality requirements and determination of the volume of dust raw materials caused the need to develop new standards of consumption of dust raw materials for timber. The consumption of dust raw materials for the production of timber depends on a number of factors, in particular: wood, sawing patterns (posture), thickness of headsaws, diameter, length, convergence, curvature and other signs of dust raw materials (timber), timber specification. The qualification of workers, technical condition of the equipment, organization of labor in compliance with technological discipline at all production sites also have a significant impact on the consumption of dust raw materials for the production of timber. According to DSTU EN 1316-1:2018 on the quality of timber, beech materials, for instance, are divided into four classes of quality (A, B, C, D). In comparison to this, they were divided into three varieties (1, 2, 3), according to GOST 9462-88. Consequently, there are differences in determining the quality of timber, which should be taken into account when setting the consumption standards of dust raw materials in the production of timber depending on the quality of raw materials and in accordance with the requirements of the current regulations. Analysis of the results of theoretical and experimental studies of volume output of lumber made it possible to develop scientifically reasonable standards for consumption of dust raw materials considering the quality of raw materials of coniferous and hardwoods during their sawing on dust and tape pads. It indicates that these results are adequate and suitable for use in production conditions, in particular for beech wood, which was used for the cost regulations.

Prevention and care for mental disorders represent an important public health task in achieving global development goals. Proper access to adequate healthcare and social services is an important step related to care for mental disorders, which is presumably strongly related to economic growth. The main aim of the study was to investigate the relationship between the economic growth and the incidence of mental disorders in the V4 countries. An ecological correlation study was conducted regarding the four Visegrad countries. Indicators were derived from the World Health Organization (WHO) ‘Health for All' (HFA) online database and Penn World Table version 10. The incidence of mental disorders increased in the V4 countries throughout the years between 2000–2018 except in Hungary, where a decreasing trend was observed. The prevalence of mental disorders increased in all countries as well, but it stagnated in Hungary. At the same time standardized death rate due to mental disorders increased in all Visegrad countries. According to the Hungarian data, while the prevalence of the disease did not change remarkably, the incidence decreased and the mortality increased as well as the prescription of drugs used in the treatment of mental disorders. This could indicate a serious hidden morbidity.

Sustainability and environmental concerns have recently led to heavy investment in the electrification of transport. A major implication of this transition is a surge in demand for batteries, the state-of-the-art energy technology for electric vehicles. While electric vehicles are locally free of emissions, battery production and end-of-life management still challenge its status as an economically, socially, and environmentally sustainable technology. Among these challenges are the globally unequal distribution of raw materials and associated geopolitical, supply and trade-related concerns as well as the high costs and environmental risks of batteries’ waste management. Furthermore, landscape disruption, biodiversity loss, and concerns over child labor and other human rights abuses haunt the mining of raw materials.The circular economy promises to remedy many of these issues, by essentially allowing economic growth without the consumption of raw materials. It has enormous potential for the European Union in particular, as it has a growing trade deficit of raw materials due to a lack of resource deposits on the continent. Therefore, independence from them is expected to boost its international competitiveness. Besides reducing raw material dependence and thus supply risks, the circular economy promises to stimulate business model and product innovation, to meet the demands for recyclable and more durable products as well as recycling goals, further strengthening competitiveness.In the case of electric vehicles, recycling processes have been established to allow the regeneration of battery-grade raw materials from batteries. Furthermore, models of extending the battery’s life cycle by applying it in a secondary application with less demanding energy and power requirements have recently been proposed, termed “second use”. This delays the point in time when a battery is recycled. Materials-break-even-points (BEP), the points in time at which an economy can achieve independence from raw materials and thus reach circularity, can be a tool of analysis for the overall effect of this delay. Second use increases the duration until the BEP, while at the same time reducing the annual demand for primary raw materials. Despite the shift in BEP, it is frequently argued that the extended battery lifetime and the reduction in primary materials demand improve resource utilization. We argue, however, that second use could have undesirable side effects. This is because due to the capacity and voltage fade occurring over a battery’s lifespan and the improvements in material efficiency through advances in research and development over time, the average amount of raw material required for the storage of one unit of energy increases relative to a scenario where the battery is recycled earlier. Hence, the overall amount of material invested in the circular economy would be larger in a scenario with second use compared to a scenario without second use. Depending on the battery technology in question and thus the materials involved, this trade-off between the amount of material invested in the economy and the use span of a battery could play out differently with respect to economic, social, and environmental effects.In this work, this trade-off is investigated for a scenario involving different shares of LFP-based lithium-ion batteries, NCX-based lithium-ion batteries, and other technologies, with a focus on the raw materials Ni, Co and Li. Technology-specific scenarios are investigated, as different technologies require different raw materials, impacting the material flow rate over time. Furthermore, different technologies exhibit a varying degree of voltage and capacity fade over their lifetime, thus affecting the resource utilization efficiency in a second-use scenario. To this end, dynamic material flow analysis is applied, and the societal, economic, and ecological consequences of our findings are discussed from a critical perspective.The insights provided by this analysis are first and foremost a contribution toward understanding the principles that determine the long-term resource efficiency of a battery circular economy. These principles are vital for policymakers when envisaging political goals and incentive schemes for the transition toward a circular economy. The findings are also vital for actors from the battery and automotive industry when developing end-of-life strategies for electric vehicle batteries, as ensuring the most efficient use of battery raw materials improves resource availability and minimizes their products' environmental and societal impact.

Creating products and services that satisfy individual and community needs is impossible without raw materials. This study takes a novel approach by integrating the economic dynamics and raw material consumption indicators of the European Union (EU). The study uses different econometric methods to analyze the relationship between GDP (gross domestic product) and the EU’s raw material consumption (RMC) from 2014–2023. Among the results, the panel data analysis model shows that the resource productivity of the EU improved during the period under review, whereas the material intensity decreased significantly. These trends significantly contributed to the relative decoupling of material consumption from GDP in the last decade. The results of the K-means cluster analysis highlight the regional economic differences within the EU. According to the results of the correlation analysis, EU member countries differ significantly in the efficiency of raw material use. Nevertheless, five member countries are robustly vulnerable to large-scale raw material use. The divergence calculation results show that while some countries use raw materials extremely efficiently to produce GDP, others achieve low efficiency. This unique approach and the resulting findings provide a new perspective on the complex relationship between economic growth and raw material use in the EU.

Environmental and economic life cycle assessment of aluminum-silicon alloys production: a case study in China

Implementation of a cleaner production program in a Brazilian wooden furniture factory

The main objective of this paper is to identify the intensity and the sense of the impact that eco-innovation and recycling exert on raw material consumption in the European Union member-states. The basic hypothesis is that eco-innovation and recycling have a significant influence on raw material consumption. The authors consider that, in the long run, by promoting eco-innovation and recycling, countries will minimize their demand and use of raw materials. In the paper, the material footprint per capita has been considered as an adequate indicator to measure the material consumption induced by economic and social activities. The model used has estimated the influence of eco-innovation and recycling on the material footprint per capita using panel data regression by considering the 27 EU countries, for the 2010–2019 time period. The authors found that the most adequate econometric model is the panel model with fixed effects. The respective econometric model validates the hypothesis that eco-innovation and recycling have significant influence on reducing the material footprint per capita and reveals heterogeneity existing among EU countries. At the same time, the model shows the intensity of influence exerted by each regressor. The eco-innovation and recycling have an important role in decreasing the material footprint per capita and should be in the centre of policies aimed at decoupling the economic growth from the raw material consumption.

Raw materials are the physical basis of the economy. Global extraction and consumption of raw materials has increased significantly in both industrialised and emerging economies driven by economic growth and increasing material wealth. This chapter reviews the geophysical basis of the economy. Minerals and ores as well as solid, liquid and gaseous fossil fuels are extracted from the Earth's crust and form part of the physical basis of the economy. Both the oceanic and the continental crust contain traces of all naturally existing elements of the periodic table. Considering that energy for mining originates mainly from fossil fuel sources and that 5 per cent to 10 per cent of global carbon emissions are attached to the mining industry, this would imply a large but currently unknown increase in carbon emissions. Economists tend to discuss issues of resource depletion as part of economic scarcity from the perspective of production costs.

The article presents a time series of raw material consumption (RMC) and total material consumption (TMC) indicators for the Czech Republic for 1990-2017 calculated with the use of hybrid input-output life cycle assessment approach (hybrid IO-LCA). While the RMC indicator has already been calculated with the use of various alternatives of input-output or hybrid approaches for some other countries, we are not aware of any published TMC time series calculated with the use of these methods. We briefly discuss the time development of the indicators' material components. The core of the article lies in the assessment of the suitability of RMC and TMC indicators for (1) Quantification of material resource consumption of nations or groups of nations and (2) Evaluation of environmental pressure related to material resource consumption. We concluded that RMC is more appropriate for quantification of material resource consumption, as unused flows included in TMC are not consumed, but only displaced. Regarding the second purpose of the indicators, we found that trends of environmental pressure expressed by RMC and TMC are similar for the Czech Republic. We showed that RMC significantly underestimates total environmental pressure related to material resource consumption, which is particularly relevant for international comparison. Finally, we revealed that the material structure of the indicators differ and referring to an example of coal and construction and industrial minerals we argued that TMC is more appropriate for the evaluation of environmental pressure attributable to particular resources.

Summary The notion of a (socio-) metabolic transition has been used todescribe fundamental changes in socioeconomic energy andmaterial use during industrialization. During the last century,Japandevelopedfromalargelyagrarianeconomytooneoftheworld’s leading industrial nations. It is one of the few industrialcountries that has experienced prolonged dematerializationand recently has adopted a rigorous resource policy. This arti-cle investigates changes in Japan’s metabolism during industri-alization on the basis of a material flow account for the periodfrom 1878 to 2005. It presents annual data for material ex-traction, trade, and domestic consumption by major materialgroup and explores the relations among population growth,economic development, and material (and energy) use. Dur-ing the observed period, the size of Japan’s metabolism grewby a factor of 40, and the share of mineral and fossil materialsin domestic material consumption (DMC) grew to more than90%. Much of the growth in the Japanese metabolism wasbased on imported materials and occurred in only 20 yearsafter World War II (WWII), when Japan rapidly built up largestocks of built infrastructure, developed heavy industry, andadopted patterns of mass production and consumption. Thesurge in material use came to an abrupt halt with the firstoil crisis, however. Material use stabilized, and the economyeventually began to dematerialize. Although gross domesticproduct (GDP) grew much faster than material use, improve-mentsinmaterialintensityarearelativelyrecentphenomenon.Japanemergesasarolemodelforthemetabolictransitionbutis also exceptional in many ways.www.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jie

The peculiarities of determination of volume and quality of dust raw materials are described in accordance with the regulations, which were cancelled from 01.01.2019 and with regulations that will remain in force. Determination of volume and quality of dust raw materials under various current regulations will inevitably create a number of inconveniences and conflicts between sellers and consumers, in particular regarding the cost of timber, setting norms for the consumption of dust raw materials in the production of timber, as well as obtaining a certificate of conformity of wood raw materials for exporters of wood products. The methodology of experimental researches of the consumption of dust raw materials for the production of unedged and edged lumber was developed. The main stages of the developed methodology include measuring the size and setting of the group of quality logs before sawing, measuring the size of dusty lumber with recording in the journal of accounting and statistical processing of experimental data. A methodical set of experimental log sawing and journals of accounting lumber and logs during experimental studies were developed and recommended for using.

The objective of this paper is evaluate the possible effects of technological changes implemented by brazilian companies in mitigation of negative impacts on the environment. For that, was analyzed a sample of companies that innovated and their consumption of raw materials, electricity and water, used them as a proxy for environmental damage. The evaluation of the database shows that environmental innovation is increasing in Brazil. The results, obtained by Least Squares (LS) and by Poisson show that implemented innovation reduced the consumption of raw materials, electricity and water. Concludes that it seems to have increased, in Brazil, the worry about implement innovations that reduce the pressures of production on the environment.

Abstract: The building and civil engineering industry yearly causes more than 40% of man-made CO2 and consumes raw materials for two-thirds of Mont Everest. To decrease the car-bon footprint and consumption of raw materials, alkali-activated materials (AAMs) are researched as an alternative to conventional building and civil engineering prod-ucts like cements, mortar, and ceramics. Ideally, locally available waste materials are used as ingredients: (i) as precursors that react with alkali and form an aluminosilicate network, and (ii) as fillers that get permanently encapsulated and safely stored in AAMs. The addition of gas bubbles and lightweight fillers transforms AAMs into alka-li-activated foams and alkali-activated lightweight materials that have the potential to be used as thermal and acoustic insulation materials. Although AAMs are researched worldwide, this review focuses on the state-of-the-art localised solely to Slovenia, par-ticularly on the materials and curing procedures used, as well as on the scientific con-tribution of the basic research. Besides, the year 2024 marks 10 years of research on al-kali activation of raw and waste inorganic materials in Slovenia. Keywords: Secondary raw materials; Alkali-activated materials; Alkali-activated foams; Low-temperature curing; Microwave curing; Circular economy

This paper aims to consider the impact of military outlays on economic stance in several states in Central Europe. Therefore, we attempted to search the long- and short-range causality between defence spending and economic growth in the Visegrad countries through analysing general values (total spending approach), as well as outlay distribution in the defence sector (spending division approach). To do so, we first presented the theoretical aspect of the problem, as well as the trends in military spending of the considered states since 1993. Second, we reviewed international results of empirical examinations in this area. Then we examined causalities among variables on the grounds of VAR methodology. We did not validate the long-term causality between defence spending and economic growth in the Visegrad countries. Nonetheless, we confirmed several short-term relationships in both empirical approaches.

The shift towards a circular economy is an essential measure in achieving sustainable development because it seeks to separate economic expansion from resource use and environmental deterioration. To meet the European Union green deal, waste management, and the net zero emissions targets various countries are developing and adopting prudent strategies. This study investigates the dynamic affiliation between circular economy (CIR), green innovation (INV), renewable energy (REE), economic progress (GDP), and urbanisation (URB) on carbon emissions (CO2) in the Visegrad (V4) countries, comprising the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. Using the CS-ARDL technique and quantile regression, data curation from 1990-2022 was analysed after checking for cross-sectional, unit root, and cointegration. The outcome demonstrates that circular economy, green innovation, and renewable energy had a negative effect on carbon emissions. In addition, GDP and URB had an immaterially positive influence on carbon emissions. Lastly, the quantile regression confirmed that the study provides useful information for policymakers and stakeholders in the Visegrad countries. It emphasised how important it is to take a broad approach to circular economy initiatives, support eco-friendly innovations, carry out renewable energy projects, and manage the urbanisation process well to achieve long-term economic growth and environmental health.