Abstract
Despite calls for large-scale reductions in material use and efforts to initiate a “circular economy” that promotes recycling and reuse, a limited decoupling between overall resource extraction and economic growth has been historically found. This is particularly true if resource use is measured with the life-cycle or consumption-based material footprint (MF) indicator that allocates material extraction to final goods and services. However, this indicator treats capital goods as final products rather than part of the production process. In this paper, we introduce the capital-augmented material footprint (CAMF), a new indicator of material use that includes all the materials embedded in capital goods. Results for 49 countries and regions over the period 1995–2015 show that for mineral use, about 50–60% of the total footprint of final consumption is embodied in capital goods, whereas for biomass, the figure is around 10%. The largest increase in material requirements was observed in non-OECD countries and in service sectors in general. More countries achieve relative and absolute decoupling when using the CAMF as indicator of material use. Our results underpin the need for comprehensive indicators when assessing options to decrease the impacts of consumption.
Highlights
The concept of sustainable development was formally introduced in the 1987 Brundtland Report, as a development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations 1987, p41)
Treating capital goods as intermediate goods rather than final products entails that production processes will consume more inputs, i.e. that the requirements of goods and services per unit output will increase for all industries and countries
While the increase in biomass remains within 5% and 13%, the increase in metals and minerals is much larger, ranging from 20% to over 160%. This could be explained by the fact that most minerals are extracted for use in the construction sector and will subsequently be transformed into capital goods such as buildings, infrastructure, etc., whereas biomass is mostly consumed by the agriculture sector, i.e. is already accounted for in the traditional material footprint (MF)
Summary
The concept of sustainable development was formally introduced in the 1987 Brundtland Report, as a development that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (United Nations 1987, p41). It is widely agreed that long-term sustainability cannot be achieved unless continued global growth in economic output and human well-being is decoupled from the use of resources (Schandl et al 2016; Van der Voet, van Oers, and Nikolic 2004; UNEP 2011; HatfieldDodds et al 2017; Krausmann et al 2017). A relative decoupling of resource extraction from economic growth has been observed (Behrens et al 2007), studies suggest that current material extraction rates are unsustainable (Hoekstra and Wiedmann 2014) and that an absolute decoupling is necessary, at least for the OECD economies (Schandl et al 2016). Global material extraction for human use is, increasing at unprecedented rates.
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