what is materials management

7/27/2019 What is Materials Management

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Good afternoon. Im David Allaway and have been asked to share somecomments on what materials management is, and why it matters.

Oregon Department of Environmental Quality October 12, 2011


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Im going to start out by offering some working definitions of materialsmanagement. Well do a quick compare and contrast between materialsmanagement and traditional solid waste management. Well explore whymaterials matter. Then well go back in time and revisit Oregons involvement in

solid waste management, and how that has changed over time, and that will helpto explain why DEQ is exploring this broader view of materials management.



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So what is materials management? Heres a working definition were using, thatwas produced by the EPA.



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This graphic visually represents this life cycle of materials, from resourceextraction through to disposal or recovery.

Circled in red in the realm of discards management, or solid waste management.This is where DEQs solid waste program, historically, has done most of itswork. But two points:

First, the decisions made here, at end-of-life, have the potential of affecting therest of the life cycle. When materials are recovered, it changes resourceextraction, processing, and manufacture.

And second, this broad definition of materials management fully includes solidwaste management, or discards management. So when we use the termmaterials management, it includes our traditional responsibilities involvingend-of-life.



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Again, discards management is very much a part of materials management.Materials management offers a broader view.

The two approaches pursue different goals: discards management primarily isinterested in, well, managing discards, sometimes through the lens of sustainability. Materials management pursues the broader goal of sustainability,as a three-legged stool of environment, economy, and society.

They also have different boundaries concerning the life cycle and environment.Discards management focuses on actions downstream of the consumer to reduceemissions from waste facilities and also to conserve resources through recovery.Materials management addresses all stages of the life cycle and all pollutants

and resources.

And they engage different sets of partners. Discards management primarilyinvolves waste generators and the waste industry, and sometimes users of recovered materials. Materials management involves those partners along witheveryone else involved in the life cycle of materials.



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To paraphrase the singer Madonna, we live in a material world.

In the past 50 years, humans have consumed more resources than in all of

previous history. In 2000, the US consumed 57% more materials than we did just 25 years earlier. Globally, the rate of increase is even higher. Our economydoesnt magically end at the state line. It is very much tied to global markets for these materials, and competition for those materials is increasing.

In 1900, 41% of the materials used in the U.S. were renewable. By 1995, only6% were. The vast majority of materials we use are nonrenewable, includingmetals, minerals, and fossil-fuel derived products. That dependence means thatour economy is fundamentally not sustainable. And with the dependence comes

risks not only to our economy, but also, our national security. Thats why thePentagon has become very interested in e-waste, because of concerns aboutChina controlling the global supply of rare earth metals.

The rapid rise in material use has led to serious environmental effects as well,including habitat destruction, biodiversity loss, the collapse of fisheries, thespread of deserts, global warming, and the spread of toxics in the environment.

A few specific examples of materials and the environment.



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Disposal, in red, contributes relatively little to these toxics in the Portlandairshed, in part because there is very little actual disposal activity (disposal sites)in the Portland area.



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But the manufacture and transport of products contributes quite a bit more tothese air toxics. Thats whats shown in green. Actually, this is a low estimate.



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And heres a high estimate. The actual contribution is somewhere between thesetwo.

So you can see that the life cycle of materials contributes significantly to toxicsin the environment, and that most of these emissions are upstream of theconsumer. Toxics in products contribute some to toxics in the air, but far moreof the air toxics come from the production and transportation of materials, evenseemingly mundane, non-toxic materials such as steel and paper, many of which are not themselves inherently toxic.



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Changing gears, this is the EPAs systems-based greenhouse gas inventory for the United States for 2006. You can see that the lighting, heating, and cooling of

buildings contributed 25% to our domestic greenhouse gas emissions in 2006.The transportation of people contributed about the same amount. But the

provision of goods and food contributed more about 42%. These includeemissions associated with resource extraction, manufacturing, freight, anddisposal.



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Yet another way to think of environmental impacts is using a method called theEcological Footprint. This begins with an estimate of the total land and water

potentially available for satisfying human demands for materials and energy, andmanaging a few of the wastes, primarily greenhouse gases, associated with that

demand. If this land and water were evenly apportioned across all humanresidents of the globe, wed each have about 1.8 hectares to live from.

But globally, human demands for materials and other resources requires that theearth provide us with an average of 2.7 hectares per person. In other words, weneed 1-1/2 earths to maintain 2007-levels of resource demand in perpetuity. Wedont have 1-1/2 earths, so what were doing is eating our proverbial seed corn.Were liquidating natural capital, draining our bank account so to speak, and as aresult we have ecosystem collapse and global warming.

Now in the US, our footprint is even higher, about 8.0 global hectares per person. So if everyone in the world lived like us, wed require about 4-1/2earths. Clearly, this cant be sustained.



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For those of you who know our program here at DEQ, the Solid Waste Program,you might be wondering: yes, but, why expand the perspective from solid wastemanagement to materials management? Isnt waste management still important?



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Well, it is. But to answer that question, a little background is in order. The solid waste laws and programs in Oregon, are very much a product of the 1980s. At that time, landfills were major sources of pollution, and we were running out places to put our garbage. Society responded by

passing laws that put new environmental controls on landfills, and also established resourceconservation as a primary goal. This goal was reflected in the solid waste management hierarchyof reduce first, then reuse, then recycle etc.

The hierarchy is called the solid waste management hierarchy but only the lower tiers arereally about solid waste management. For example, the environmental and economic value of recycling is primarily in providing industry with materials that displace virgin feedstocks in

production. Its value is as a manufacturing strategy, although recycling is more commonlyviewed as a way to manage discards. So it is a hybrid of sorts.

Moving to the top of the hierarchy, reduce and reuse, what DEQ calls waste preventionreally has almost nothing to do with solid waste management. In essence, waste prevention is

about changing what we buy and how we use stuff. And that fundamental difference is onereason the solid waste management community has not been very effective at waste prevention,while business and industry has been.

The programs that were created in the 1980s and 1990s have served as well. Landfills polluteless, and we now have no shortage of places to put our states garbage. Were recycling andcomposting a lot more, and conserving resources and reducing pollution as a result. But there arelimitations to this framework. Ill mention three.



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The first limitation of the discards management framework is that itinstitutionalizes focus on the less impactful part of the life cycle. For mostmaterials, the environmental impacts upstream of the user are commonly 10 or 100 times higher than the impacts of waste. For example, upstream processes

contribute about 20 times more domestic greenhouse gases than wastemanagement does. Solid waste, in most cases, just isnt very impactful, except tothe extent that it represents a lost opportunity to recover potentially valuablematerials.

Yet our society at times borders on obsession with the trivial. For example, Iveheard innumerable discussions about the merits or challenges of compostabledishware. These discussions almost always focus on what happens at thecompost site or the landfill. Almost never does anyone ask about the upstreamimpacts. But thats where the majority of impacts likely occur. And the focus onsolid waste obscures that.



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The framework of discards management can also lead us to make decisionsthat are penny wise but pound foolish. Let me offer an example.

Last year we completed a major life cycle analysis of 30 different practices inresidential construction, remodeling and demolition. Several of the practicesinvolved changes to how walls are framed.



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Here we have the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, over the 70-year lifecycle of a typical residential home in Oregon, associated with three differentframing practices. These are all expressed relative to a baseline of zero, whichrepresents a standard home. So compared to that standard home, intermediate

framing placing studs every 24 rather than every 16, offers a 3% reductionin lifecycle GHG emissions. So does advanced floor framing, and other advanced framing practices. And thats about all DEQ can offer from the narrow

perspective of waste prevention.



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But if we take those blinders off, we find much more attractive options.Insulated concrete forms, SIPs, strawbale, even double walls all offer significantly greater reduction in emissions. But they all increase wastegeneration and in at least two cases, increase the use of materials that are

difficult to recycle. Now, as an environmental agency, we should be able to talk about these options. And we do. But they run contrary to our programs goals,and thats pretty uncomfortable. Weve taken the extra effort to look holistically,

because were already moving towards materials management. But if wewerent, the narrow focus of solid waste would have led us to makingrecommendations that are really not optimal.



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Finally, while there are still important opportunities to protect the environment by changing how we manage discards, the potential benefit of these changes islimited. Heres an example.



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Youve seen this graph before. I apologize that Im using yet another exampleabout greenhouse gases, but I like examples supported by analysis, andgreenhouse gases are among the better documented environmental impacts.

On the left we have the domestic emissions of greenhouse gases in 2006. Evenwith a 32% recovery (recycling and composting) rate, materials contributed 42%to our domestic emissions. Most of these emissions are upstream, in production.

So what if we could practically eliminate the impacts of waste? If we couldachieve something akin to zero waste, with 95% of municipal solid wasterecycled or composted, and 70% of construction and demolition debris recycled,wed reduce emissions by about 6%. Thats really big, but it would still leave

most of the emissions associated with materials untouched. We could reducesome of these other emissions through waste prevention (using less), but thatsgoing to have limits too. Sometimes well consume less, but is there room to talk about consuming differently, to pursue environmental outcomes that are moreimpactful than just reducing waste in landfills? And how about producing differently ? Weve not really explored what that might mean, but this 2050Vision process provides an opportunity to have that discussion.



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So, this system that were operating, the framework of solid waste management,was largely designed in the 1980s. But its not the 1980s any more. The worldhas changed, and the framework of solid waste management is starting to frayaround the edges. At times, it de-emphasizes what is important, it may lead to

bad decisions, and it narrows societys options for responding to pressingeconomic and environmental challenges. Our stakeholders, and businesses in

particular, understand that were in a different world. Will DEQ, and Oregon,change along with them?



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I want to mention that this shift, from solid waste to broader materialsmanagement, is also happening in other states, and at the EPA. This report hereexplores how EPA and states might move in the direction of sustainablematerials management. DEQ was not substantively involved in this report, and

yet we came to some similar conclusions.

In this report, EPA recommends that materials be managed on the basis of fulllife-cycle impacts, not just end-of-life criteria; that EPA and state agencies buildcapacity and integrate materials management into existing programs; and thatwe engage in a broad public dialog on life-cycle materials management. Thisvisioning process that were starting with you today represents an important partof that dialog.



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Thats the end of my slides. Id be happy to take any questions. Thank you.

what is materials management

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