What environmental constraints will materials have to face in the future? Can currentmeasurement tools like LCA (Life Cycle Analysis) support the choices of material and adaptto these constraints to pave the way to a sustainable world? Are there some alternative orcomplementary approaches to enhance the quality of information for decision makers? Theaim of this article is to provide answers to these three questions. The society oftomorrow, in the second half of the 21st century, will be a society where the circulareconomy will play a more important role and thus will help reduce materials waste. This isa critical aspect of sustainability. To get there, the decisions have to be enlightenedand fair, because the decisions (or non-decisions) made today shape the world that futuregenerations will have to manage. Furthermore, Lord Kelvin used to say: “what you can’tmeasure, you can’t improve”. Therefore, these decisions have to be supported bymeasurement tools that will properly capture the stakes of reuse and recycling at the endof life of products. Today, LCA is the common tool used to address this matter. However,the present article has shown that LCA cannot incorporate the whole complexity ofsustainability. LCA is good at considering micro-scale issues, comparing one solution withanother, in a static approach. How can it give right directions to decision makers inorder to support the vision of a circular economy? The application of different standardsshowed that it is not easy at all and that recycling product at their end of life are notrewarded equally and sometimes not promoted at all. Therefore rebound effects leading tocontradictory decisions may occur. LCA alone is not enough to make enlightened decisions.It should be complemented by other methods. This was proposed in the last part. Based onthe IPAT equation, this approach tries to capture different aspects that are not addressedproperly by LCA, due to the fact that the functional unit is too restrictive, that thetime dimension and prospective approach should be more integrated, and that it shouldenlarge the scale of the analysis to the macro-economy and the socio-economy. It shouldalso recognize that the efforts have to be shared by different players including materialindustry and manufacturers, policy makers and society in general. As a general conclusion,we are convinced that tomorrow’s society will recognize the value of materials that arerecyclable and reusable, like steel has been for many decades. But there is still a clearneed to addressing, in research and development, the improvement of the metrics, combiningsocial, environmental and economic assessment, so that the sustainability value ofmaterials is properly measured. These are the objectives of the Sovamat Initiative and theSAM conferences.

The European Waste Framework Directive (2008/98/EC) explicitly specifies the hierarchyfor waste management: prevention, preparation for re-use, recycling, other recoveryactions, disposal. When selecting waste management options, this waste hierarchy should befollowed. A deviation can only be justified by Life Cycle Thinking (LCT) on the overallimpacts. The application of this principle in the Flemish waste management practicetriggered the need for evaluation of treatment options for several waste streams.Alternative treatments were evaluated for waste batteries, used frying oils and waste oil.The evaluation methodology combined life cycle assessment with technical and economicalviability criteria. These cases show that LCT does not allow to establish a “generalpriority order”. In each case reasons for deviation from the standard waste hierarchycould be given, but also none of the evaluated options can be considered as the best. Theevaluation showed that the priority is largely dependent on location-specificcharacteristics of inputs, outputs, processes and installations and that the establishmentof local and global environmental priorities always implies a value choice. In thispresentation, we will present the results of the three cases and provide a methodologicalframework for life cycle thinking in waste management policy.

There is an increasing need for expanding the scope of traditional life cycle studies toanswer system-wide sustainability questions. This has resulted in a framework for lifecycle sustainability analysis (LCSA). Since the framework was first published in 2009, asone of the outcomes of the CALCAS project, several views and considerations concerning themethodological approach have been published. However, until now practical experience withLCSA is very limited. This paper reports first efforts and experiences in bringing theLCSA framework into practice by assessing the sustainability of solar fuels. Startingpoint of the project is the hypotheses that new technologies can only be practicallyimplemented if they fit into a socially, economically and ecologically sustainablecontext. The analysis therefore aims at identifying performance criteria which a newtechnology needs to fulfil in order to compete in the existing market. It is argued that aLCSA study should be initiated with a broad but relevant system description as the firstof in total five steps Of this five step approach, the first – system description – isdiscussed here. The system description identifies and describes the technologicaldescription, the intended application of a technology, which share of specific demand forservice will be met, which other technologies contribute in meeting this demand, the(relevant indicators for addressing )sustainable impacts of meeting the demand anddevelopments over time. By doing so it provides a solid basis for further steps in theLCSA study.

Especially in OECD countries, the reduction of primary energy consumption is a major taskto avoid further increase in CO2 emissions. Since 37% of the annual energyconsumption is related to the building sector, it is a major challenge for the future todevelop methods for significant improvement of the energy efficiency of building design,construction and operation. It has to be noted that the development of sustainablebuildings addresses both engineering and social aspects. From an engineering viewpointmethods to improve the ecologic efficiency of buildings by increasing the lifetime have tobe provided. From a social viewpoint these new approaches must take the future needs ofsociety into consideration. In addition, also governance structures and the regulatoryframework for the construction and operation of buildings need to be modified in thedirection of sustainability. The article will initially identify the major research topicsfor the development of sustainable design principles for buildings. Afterwards, structuralrequirements will be defined and translated into required property profiles for buildingmaterials. Herein, both mechanical and functional properties are of importance, so thatapproaches will be presented how to combine these properties in composite buildingmaterials. With respect to mechanical properties, new steels will have to be developedwith an improved balance of strength and ductility, so that some promising steel designconcepts will be shown. Additionally, new approaches for the failure assessment of thesenew steel types will be presented to enhance the exploitation of the characteristics ofthe innovative materials.

Concerns for climate change and declining oil reserves lead to a shift of transportationsystems in many industrial countries. However, alternative drive concepts contain to someextent critical raw materials. Since the availability of certain raw materials could bedecisive for the success of emerging technologies, concerns are growing about thepotential limitation of resources. This brought about a growing attention to the subjectsof criticality and resource security of raw materials by science, policy and industry.Four of the resulting surveys are described in terms of their framing of criticality,their indicators for evaluating criticality, and their rankings of potentially criticalraw materials. Critical raw materials are used in alternative drive concepts because oftheir specific properties. The focus of our work lies on batteries for electric vehicleswith special attention to lithium-ion batteries being one of the most promising candidatesfor energy storage there. Lithium-ion batteries use as major cathode materials lithium,manganese and cobalt, all of which are potential critical. A material flow model of theglobal manganese cycle is developed. It could be identified that there is a lack ofrelevant data for processes and flows. The lack of data impedes a comprehensive view andtherefore no final conclusions could be drawn, which advice the need for further research.Using manganese as an example, it could be illustrated how material flow analysis cancontribute to compiling relevant preparatory work that can subsequently serve as a basisfor a prospective support of a criticality evaluation and to inform stakeholders andpolicy makers about the effectiveness of various interventions to reduce the risk or theeffects of supply chain disruptions.

The challenges of sustainable urban development are tremendous. More than half of the earth’s population lives in cities and there is an upward trend. On a global scale, the cities are the greatest greenhouse gas producers and the biggest consumers of water and energy. Urbanisation, climate change and demographic change are forcing metropolises to make their infrastructure more efficient, be environmentally friendlier, keep the high standard of living and if possible save costs. One of the keys is the selection of materials. Buildings are responsible for 40% of the energy consumption and approx. 21% of produced CO2 worldwide. Scientists and researchers from all over the world are looking into new technologies, so that energy could be used efficiently and CO2 emissions reduced, without having to pass on comfort or “lifestyle habits” [http://www.siemens.de/nachhaltige-stadtentwicklung/nachhaltige-stadtentwicklung.html?stc=deccc020187 (accessed 27.04.2012)]. Sustainability is a complex term, used in the last 2–3 decades. It involves more than just the environment and it concerns every one of mankind [cf. Schlussbericht der Enquete-Kommission Globalisierung der Weltwirtschaft – Herausfordeung-en und Antworten, Drucksache 14/9200, http://dipbt.bundestag.de/dip21/btd/14/092/1409200.pdf, p. 393]. This is why social and engineering scientists from RWTH Aachen University have joined in their efforts to figure out how used shipping containers, which are in abundant supply, can play their role in the future of sustainable construction. After they have been used several times, freight containers are considered disused and begin to accumulate in the surroundings of seaports and harbours. The energy to produce a container is significant and considered wasted if the steel box has completed only a few runs. The first association with containers can be a cold and uncomfortable cell, however, after a glance at the properly adapted shipping containers, converted into cosy, pretty and affordable habitable spaces, this preconception can soon be dismissed. Research has shown, in terms of environment and design, they are innovative and intelligent – building with cargo containers is cheaper, “greener”, faster and more flexible than traditional methods. With the increase of life expectancy and population continuing to grow, demand for housing will rise as well. Demographic change and the demand will contribute to rising construction prices. Habitation is one of the essential basic needs of all people. If one takes into account population growth and the timely provision of housing for all people, existing construction methods have to be adapted and new ones developed. Space in the social sense is an expression of the society and not its reflexion [cf. M. Castells, The Rise of Network Society, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, p. 440f]. Bearing in mind the diversity in Europe’s population and the anxiety for environmental protection and sustainability, also the contrariness in environmental awareness and behavior, likewise eco-friendly and polluting habits in our everyday life, which are linked together in a various and unconsidered way, validates having different levels of environmental awareness depending on the different segments of society. We speak here of the “patchwork” – character of lifestyles and values, which is illustrated and explained easily with the Sinus-Milieu-Model [Bundesministerium für Umwelt, Naturschutz und Reaktorsicherheit, Umweltbewusstsein in Deutschland 2010, Ergebnisse einer repräsentativen Bevölkerungsumfrage, 2010, p. 13]. This paper discusses the existing Sinus-Milieus® [http://www.sinus-institut.de/en/ (accessed 27.04.2012)] and their features and show hereupon the growing demand in the society on flexible living concepts and habitat designs. The theory supports, that building with steel containers could be a real solution for the social and environmental problems. A continuously availability of shippingcontainers as a building block is expected and therefore the construction business with steel containers has a great potential in terms of sustainability towards a sustainable construction in a sustainable city.

The increasing proportion of renewable resources in electricity mixes, thedecentralization of energy supply and the growing use of electric vehicles demands thechallenging development of reliable, cost effective and flexible energy storagetechnologies. One option are electrochemical energy storage systems with high specificpower and high specific energy density. One of the most promising electrochemical energystorage systems is the lithium-ion batteries (LIB) which are customized regarding size,weight, specific energy and specific capacity what makes batteries ready for operationunder different conditions such as emerging electric power systems, grid support orelectric mobility [1]. Even though the lithium-Iontechnology for traction batteries is not yet widely applied, experiments and first useexperiences show that it is a promising electric energy storage system for electricmobility. However, the environmental impacts of battery production, use and recycling arenot well understood. To gain a better understanding about the ecological properties ofLIBs material and energy flow analysis (MEFA) is conducted. The MEFA defines the possiblesources and consumers of relevant materials, substances, pollutants and energy flows[2, 3]. Thepresented study analyses the consumed materials and energy as well as the emittedsubstances and waste heat of different LIBs. The main focus of the MEFA is on theproduction phase and includes active and passive components and material such asmetal-salts, electrode materials, other functional metals (e.g. current collectors,casing, etc.), plastics (e.g. separator) and electrolytes [4--7] and on energy consumption aswell.

The year of 2012 marks the 20th anniversary since the concept of ecological footprint was introduced to the global community for the first time. Nowadays footprint studies have gained extensive debates as well as popularity. In this paper, we define the footprint family as an indicator system of selected footprints that measure some aspects of human impacts on the environment. A relatively comprehensive introduction and comparison of four key footprints is represented by listing their characteristics in different aspects. The interaction among these footprints within the footprint family is classified into three types: overlap, contradiction and complement. The description of each type is provided in detail. Limitations and uncertainties of the footprint family, and priorities for further improvement are also performed. This research makes a preliminary attempt at developing the conceptual framework for the footprint family, which allows us to examine the performance of footprints combination. The footprint family will serve as a tool for integrating footprints on human impacts assessment, and a support for environmental decision-making.

Emergy evaluation (EME) is an environmental assessment method which isgaining international recognition and has increasingly been applied during the lastdecade. Emergy represents the memory of the geobiosphere exergy(environmental work) – measured in solar emjoules (seJ) – that has beenused in the past or accumulated over time to make a natural resource available. Therationale behind the concept of Emergy is the consideration that alldifferent forms of energy can be sorted under a hierarchy and measured with the commonmetric of the seJ, which is then the yardstick through which all energy inputs and outputscan be compared with each other. For this reason EME is suggested to be a suitable methodof environmental accounting for a wide set of natural resources, and can be used to defineguidelines for sustainable consumption of resources. Despite those interesting features,EME is still affected by several drawbacks in its calculation procedures and in itsgeneral methodological background, which prevent it from being accepted by a widercommunity. The main operational hurdle lays in the set of mathematical rules (known asEmergy algebra rules) governing EME, which do not follow logic ofconservation and make their automatic implementation very difficult. This work presents anopen source code specifically created for allowing a rigorous Emergycalculation (complying with all the Emergy algebra rules). Wemodeled the Emergy values circulating in multi-component systems with anoriented graph, formalized the problem in a matrix-based structure and developed a variantof the well-known track summing algorithm to obtain the totalEmergy flow associated with the investigated product. The calculationroutine (written in C++) implements the Depth First Search (DFS) strategy for graphsearches. The most important features of the calculation routine are: (1) its ability toread the input in matrix form without the need of drawing a graph; (2) its rigorousimplementation of the Emergy rules; (3) its low running time, which makesthe algorithm applicable to any system described at the level of detail nowadays madepossible by the use of the available life cycle inventory (LCI) databases. A version ofthe Emergy calculation routine based on the DFS algorithm has beencompleted and is being tested on case studies involving matrices of thousands of rows andcolumns, describing real product production systems.

Materials have been invented by mankind in the course of prehistory and history and have evolved during this long period of time to fit the parallel changes in technological epistemes. Materials, therefore, have been a cumulative technological commodity, because of the continuity that this mechanism of change has ensured Structural materials, of which all anthropogenic artefacts are made and with which they are made (machines, process tools, etc.), have been more especially enduring and have carved themselves specific roles in our world that survive across major paradigm shifts and Kondratief cycles. Materials are analyzed here in terms of their physico-chemical nature (or physio-chemical in the case of natural, renewable materials) and of their footprints on energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, two of the major lenses through which the sustainability of our economic world is presently observed. The picture that comes out of this examination is that of complementarity and cooperation between materials, with competition acting as a sting to avoid a slack in technology but no pushing any of them out of their market, at least globally. This cohabitation, akin to a natural selection mechanism in a global ecosystem, may be the real driver of dematerialization, a trend which population growth and urbanization forces on mankind.