A Planet of Our Making
The history of humans is marked by crossover points.
These may be single events or a more gradual process of change. Think of the transition from hunting to gathering or the digital revolution where rapid technological change has been driven by the development of computers, the internet and mobile devices.
In 2020 Ron Milo and his team from the Department of Plant and Environmental Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science identified another crossover point. There is now more anthropogenic mass on earth than biomass.
Anthropogenic (human-made) mass: the overall materials output of human activities e.g., designed goods, buildings, cities
Living biomass: plants constitute about 90%, followed by bacteria, fungi, archaea, protists, and animals
The figure above shows that buildings and infrastructure make up a huge proportion of anthropogenic mass.
Humans consume an almost incomprehensible amount of stuff…on a yearly basis. The quantity of materials extracted from Earth annually has almost quadrupled since 1970 and totalled 92 billion tonnes in 2017.
This unabated level of resource extraction is not only contributing to climate change but also to resource scarcity and environmental degradation including biodiversity loss.
The built environment accounts for approximately half of global annual materials demand by mass.
Taking a look at the numbers, the built environment accounts for approximately 40% of global anthropogenic carbon emissions. These emissions arise from both the construction (~13%) and operation (~27%) of the built environment and directly contribute to climate change.
What is the built environment? Well it’s the homes we live in, the buildings we work in, the factories we make stuff in, and the stores we shop in and much more.
We will spend the majority of our lives in these spaces (homes, buildings, factories etc.) and it’s therefore no surprise that they make such a significant contribution to global carbon emissions and in turn climate change.
These spaces are made out of stuff, lots and lots of it. I’m convinced that these spaces can make a positive contribution to mitigating climate change.
Exploring where extracted material ends up it a great place to start to understand how we currently use materials.
It can help us to use resources in a more efficient and sustainable manner.
Material stocks and flows are tracked using material flow analysis (MFA). This is essentially mass balance for engineers.
MFA is described by Brunner and Rechburger as:
“a systematic assessment of the flows and stocks of materials within a system defined in space and time”
Quantifying these stocks and flows has a number of other benefits such as;
- Locating reservoirs of materials and products
- Identifying opportunities for more efficient use of materials, or recycling. Efficiency = material or energy (usefully) used in a system / material or energy input into system
- Forecast potentially disruptive material or product flows
- Check for system “leaks” (dissipation of useful material)
- Find perturbations of natural cycles
- Use to develop resource sustainability indicators
Geographically global material consumption is concentrated in a few countries. China, the United States, and India account for approximately half of the global material demand.
Milo et al. 2020 have estimated that on the level on the individual
“On average for each person on the globe, anthropogenic mass equal to more than his or her body weight is produced every week”
Now, what does the future look like now that we have passed this crossover point?
According to Neri Oxman, the future holds a positive symbiosis between nature and humans. Oxman’s work looks at understanding if there is a way to design all products as if they are part of the biosphere. This means designing products to be grown by nature.
Design can have a major influence on the life cycle environmental impact of a building or piece of infrastructure. We can reduce life cycle impacts by using design strategies such as designing materials and components for reuse. This would involve use of demountable elements, fixing instead of glues, allowing for materials to be disassembled at the end of their useful service life. Producing durable and long lasting products will also have a major influence on how often they are replaced in turn reducing the quantity of stuff we’re producing in the first place.
Oxman thinks the future has the potential to bring about not just buildings and cities, but all products that can both augment and heal nature. Wouldn’t that be cool!
Neri was previously leader of the Mediated Matter research group at MIT and runs Oxman — a revolutionary design, technology and biology company “inventing multi-scale products and environments…that flow across hardware, software, and wet ware.”
The future may end up looking nothing like this and even if it does we’re still some way off. However, entrepreneurs all over the globe are innovating and experimenting with local waste streams to create materials and products that reduce the demand on resource extraction and promote a circular economy.
Here are three companies, worth checking out, that are all working with nature to rethink our relationship with materials.
Biohm: producing thermally insulating material from food and farm waste using mycelium
Biozeroc: aim to disrupt the construction industry’s reliance on cement by introducing a novel technique to “grow” concrete using biotech and existing materials
Lanzatech: Industry leaders in carbon recycling technology using bacteria to produce chemical feedstocks
