First chapter from Michael F Ashby’s book “Materials and Sustainable Development”.

Bottom Line Up Front

I rate this 5.7.

Many very good visuals show that we’re using rarer materials and more of them.t

Summary

Michael starts by defining sustainable development. Not everyone perceives sustainable development the same way. Environment, Economy, Society.

Development, in a purely technical sense, is just economic growth. Environment is something to be exploited to help progress society from farmers to industrial and beyond. GDP is all that counts.

Next, a brief history. 18th century resource depletion predictions. Club of Rome concluded the same. Michael gives us a table of 9 more recent ones. History of materials is even more boring, table of stone age, iron age, age of steel, age of polymers, then age of composites. Michael follows this up with graphs showing the logarithmic growth in Polymers, showing that we use as much PVC as Bricks, Cotton, and Aluminum.

Bricks are clay, even iron is abundant. Some newer tech needs more exotic materials. These ‘critical’ materials, while traded globally, come from a limited number of sources.

Examples:

Old light bulbs had a small tungsten filament as the only ‘critical’ material, modern lightbulbs use 6 elements, only 2 of which you’ve even heard of, from the ‘critical’ list.

Old landlines had no critical elements, modern cellphones light up the periodic table light a christmas tree.

Old engines were mostly steel, maybe some tungsten. Modern ones, ignoring the chips, are made of exotic alloys.

Not only are we using rarer materials, but we’re consuming more.

Thoughts

Interesting read, intuitive, but I haven’t seen it broken down like this.