One unsustainable part of the industrial economy is the mining and processing of materials and fuels which creates also large flows of ‘waste’ and burdens environmental sinks. Upstream, huge amounts of solid waste are generated in mining and processing processes. One-fifth (2%) of global energy- and process-related CO2 emissions arise from the production and processing [...]
What is waste? A friend once took me to the urban waste treatment plant in Kolkata and I had the strange experience of looking into the stomach and intestines of a huge organism. Across an enormous field, human beings were processing from the right to the left the urban garbage stream in a kind of digestive [...]
Conceptual framework The gradual change from mining ores to mining in-use-stocks can be considered a materials transition. The ratios between metal in the lithosphere, in in-use stocks and in end-of-lifetime stocks are indicators of the degree to which human use of the metal is progressing from virgin ore only to recycled material only. It can [...]
Models of oil and gas exploitation An important issue in sustainable development discourses is the depletion of finite resources of fossil fuels and minerals. The concepts of supply cost curves and reserve-production ratios (RPR) have been introduced in resource economics, in combination with learning-by-doing (see Appendix 8A.1 en Box 17.2 in Sustainability Science book and [...]
In the context of sustainable development, the emphasis is usually on depletion and a key question is: How big is the resource or, in expert jargon, what is the geological resource base? First, I look at mineral ores. Solid evidence on resource ore quantity and quality is limited by its very nature to those regions [...]
Forests in Japan have been under pressure already for millennia (Totman 1989). More than 2000 years ago, rice culture caused the first dramatic modifications of woodlands and bronze and iron smelting started to put pressure on the forest due to the demand for high-quality charcoal. Metallurgy led to new, more powerful tools and the assault [...]
On the eastside of Utrecht, there is a large area with a lake, a playground, trees, statues, an animal farm. It’s a very enjoyable place for all kinds of people and activities. Yet, only 60 years ago, it was the largest dangerous waste dump in The Netherlands. The story illustrates nicely the interaction over time [...]
Some 1500 km east of Papua New Guinea, in the Pacific, is the small island of Nauru. It is the smallest independent republic, with nowadays some 12.000 inhabitants on an area of less than 25 km2. The story of Nauru's ‘discovery’ in 1798 by a British captain who gave it the name Pleasant Island and [...]
Papua New Guinea is one of the world's largest island. Called the ‘Last Great Place’, it is home to hundreds of unique species of animals and plants as well as to upward of 820 languages. The Porgera gold mine is situated in the highlands. It produced around 18 tons of gold per year and over [...]