YSTAFDB, a unified database of material stocks and flows for sustainability science

We present the Yale Stocks and Flows Database (YSTAFDB), which comprises most of the material stocks and flows (STAF) data generated at the Center for Industrial Ecology at Yale University since the early 2000s. These data describe material cycles, criticality, and recycling in terms of 62 elements and various engineering materials, e.g., steel, on spatial scales and timeframes ranging from cities to global and the 1800s to ca. 2013. YSTAFDB integrates this diverse collection of STAF data, previously scattered across various non-uniformly formatted electronic files, into a single data structure and file format. Here, we discuss this data structure as well as the usage and formatting of data records in YSTAFDB. YSTAFDB contains 100,000+ data records that are all situated in their systems contexts, with additional metadata included as available. YSTAFDB offers a comprehensive basis upon which STAF data can be accumulated, integrated, and exchanged, and thereby improves their accessibility. Therefore, YSTAFDB facilitates deeper understanding of sustainable materials use and management, which are key goals of contemporary sustainability science

Promoting reuse behaviour: Challenges and strategies for repeat purchase, low-involvement products

Reusable products offer reduced environmental impact compared to recycling, but producers mostly focus on strategies such as light-weighting, recyclability and eco-labelling. A reasonable number of innovative reusable products and business models exist for repeat purchase, low-involvement products, but they are largely restricted to niche health-food stores. Therefore, this research primarily attempts to understand consumer attitudes and behaviour towards reuse of household care products (e.g. air fresheners, domestic cleaning products). Focus groups with UK consumers are utilised to examine reusable/refillable spray products and the data are triangulated with global archival data on various refill business models, reusable products and recycling initiatives. The study offers useful guidelines for both producers and policy makers to encourage reusable products. First, we recommend that eco-innovations have a familiar design congruent with well-known brands, to reduce uncertainties for consumers. Second, if the innovation has an unfamiliar design, to mitigate, producers should offer new functional benefits. Third, and most important, producers must place greater emphasis on aesthetic aspects that could evoke product attachment, thus encouraging reuse. Fourth, if reusable products are to become mainstream, ‘well-known brands’ have to promote the transition from one-off sales to a service model built on durable products. Finally, a successful outcome is dependent on government interventions in designing new life cycle policy instruments, in particular de-marketing the current recycling norm and emphasising reusing over recycling

Dynamic Spectra Of 4-2 Mhz Solar Bursts: Results From Orbiting Geophysical Observatory Iii.

PhDAstronomyAstrophysicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/187974/2/6918013.pd

Urban Environmental Sustainability Metrics: A Provisional Set

Designing or transforming urban areas into 'sustainable cities' is becoming an increasingly common vision. It is, however, an unrealizable vision without agreement on how to determine whether a sustainable city vision has been fulfilled. In this paper we define a provisional set of urban environmental sustainability metrics, chosen to cover the spectrum of issues related to urban areas, and to be drawn from data that are customarily available. We devise a display technique to communicate efficiently the results of a metrics evaluation to a variety of stakeholders. The approach is illustrated by applying the metrics set to Vancouver, Canada, an urban area that has expended considerable effort toward achieving its own environmental vision.

Measuring the contemporary dissipation rates of metals during use

Dissipative uses of elements have come under increased scrutiny due to eco-toxicological effects of heavy metals in the environment and long-term sustainability of metal supply. Despite that, a comprehensive approach on elemental dissipation has not been proposed yet and very little attention has been paid to the loss of elements by design with any potential of recovery at end-oflife. In this study we categorized the main material streams of elements in use depending on rationales of dissipation and a model has been developed for measuring the contemporary dissipation rates for fifty-five elements. Inherently dissipative uses affect fewer than a dozen of elements (including mercury and arsenic), but the spectrum of elements dissipated increases rapidly if applications from which they are currently unrecoverable are considered. In many cases the dissipation rates are higher than 50%: among others, specialty metals (e.g., thallium, indium, and gallium) and some heavy rare earths are representative of modern technology and their loss gives a measure of how unsustainable is the contemporary use of materials and products. The outcomes provide guidance to industry and academy to identify pathways for reducing material losses and support the research for substitutes and technical developments for increasing elements recovery at end-of-life

Should We Mine the Seafloor? Presentations from the AAAS 2017 Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, U.S.A.

Slides from session "Should We Mine the Seafloor?" presented at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) 2017 Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, U.S.A. February 16-20, 201