“At the moment, the #circulareconomy is still a vision,”

"Humans are producing more products from each kilogram of material than before. But rising global affluence is blotting out these #efficiency gains, ensuring that the material footprint continues to rise."

"The largest driver of rising #materialfootprint in the past two decades has been the investment of upper-middle-income countries, mostly in the Asia-Pacific region, in construction and durable goods."

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-02596-4

Help! Does anyone know the source of the often quoted "50Gt/y material footprint is the sustainable maximum"?

Another user here asked about this a while back but I don't think anyone found it.

@gerrymcgovern found this:

https://ayhoekstra.nl/pubs/Hoekstra-Wiedmann-2014-EnvironmentalFootprint.pdf

Which relies on this:

M. Dittrich, S. Giljum, S. Lutter, C. Polzin, “Green economies around the world? Implications of resource use for development and the environment”
(Sustainable Europe Research Institute, Vienna, Austria, 2012).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/301790657_Green_economies_around_the_world_Implications_of_resource_use_for_development_and_the_environment/link/572895b508ae0acc4f497c9b/download

on page 37 they say:

"with regard to the environment, it could be argued that nature has limited resources, and therefore, global resource extraction should be frozen at the level of one base year, for example 1992, the year of the first Rio Summit at around
50 billion tonnes."

Is 50Gt really just a guess? Does it/should it include biomass, and sand and gravel?

#MF #MaterialFootprint #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Degrowth #LessIsMore