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                       WORLDWATCH INSTITUTE

                  The Next Efficiency Revolution:
             Creating a Sustainable Materials Economy

                 by John E. Young and Aaron Sachs

                      worldwatch@igc.apc.org

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      USING LESS MATERIAL REDUCES POLLUTION AND CREATES JOBS

     Consumer societies can no longer avoid confronting the
inefficiency with which they use materials, according to a new
Worldwatch Institute study.  An overhaul of the materials economy-
-redesigning products and processes and reducing waste--would
create millions of new jobs, while reducing the production of
toxic waste and a range of other environmental problems.
     The report, "The Next Efficiency Revolution: Creating a
Sustainable Materials Economy," by John E. Young and Aaron Sachs,
is a blueprint for spurring materials-conserving design, reuse and
recycling.
     "Though environmental policy makers have focused on the
growing glut of garbage and pollution, most of the environmental
damage is done before materials ever reach the consumer.  Just
four primary materials industries--paper, plastics, chemicals, and
metals--account for 71 percent of the toxic emissions from
manufacturing in the United States, according to the researchers. 
Five materials--paper, steel, aluminum, plastics, and container
glass--account for 31 percent of U.S. manufacturing energy use." 

Among the signs of progress identified by the new study:

- The number of U.S. curbside pickup programs for recyclable grew
from 1,042 in 1988 to 6,678 in 1993. 

- The Chicago Board of Trade, one of the world's premiere
commodities markets, will begin formally trading secondary
materials in early 1995.

- The German government's requirement that manufacturers take
responsibility for their products has virtually eliminated some
types of packaging.

- Thirteen U.S. states have set minimum recycled-content standards
for newsprint, and 15 more have negotiated voluntary agreements
with newspapers.  In 1988, there were only nine newsprint
recycling plants in North America; now there are 29.

- The World Bank is now supporting Lanais Ganda--"Clean and
Beautiful"--a Manila-based network of scavengers who comb the
city's trash for reusable items.  Thanks to the program, hundreds
of people have been able to establish small businesses.


     The study identifies the enormous appetite of industrial
economies for materials--including metals, granite, wood products,
and plastics--as one of the leading threats to the planet's
ecosystems.  Total U.S. consumption of virgin raw materials was 17
times greater in 1989 than it was in 1900, a span during which the
country's population grew just a little over threefold.
     "With world population increasing at a rate of 90 million
(more than one Germany) annually, and consumer aspirations rising,
society's current appetite for raw materials is so great that even
the most sophisticated waste recovery techniques would not be able
to feed it," the study finds.  "We would still be forced to
extract an unsustainable harvest of virgin resources."
     Residents of the industrialized world comprise only about 20
percent of the global population, yet they consume 85 percent of
the world's aluminum, 81 percent of its paper, 80 percent of its
iron and steel, and 76 percent of its lumber, according to Young
and Sachs.
     To reduce pollution and stimulate economic development, the
authors recommend shifting from primary industries to greater
reliance on recycling, repairing, and remanufacturing businesses. 
Such a shift, they argue, would bring new economic opportunities. 
The biggest payoff: an increase in jobs.  Industries founded on
secondary materials will allow pioneering companies to open up
entirely new economic sectors.  
     Recycling is growing rapidly in many industrialized
countries, say Young and Sachs, but governments need to go further
by promoting efficient design of consumer products, buildings, and
entire communities, and by encouraging greater substitution of
recovered materials for virgin minerals, timber, and agricultural
products.  "Instead of defining success as getting the most
materials, we need to move to a new standard:  getting the most
from them."
     Recycling 60 percent of U.S. solid waste could save the
energy equivalent of 315 million barrels of oil each year, say
Young and Sachs.
     In the past, the study reports, raw materials prices have
remained artificially low because governments have not factored in
environmental costs.  In addition, government subsidies often
promote raw extraction.  But Young and Sachs argue that
governments could provide strong incentives not to degrade the
resource base in the first place by raising prices to more
realistic levels--by forcing industries to cover the full
environmental costs of their activities instead of leaving the
bill for the public to pay.
     These reforms, if accompanied by reductions in the taxes
levied on workers and their incomes, and by efforts to help
industries convert to cleaner activities, would be relatively
painless.  Moreover, the money saved by governments could be used
to spur the development of a reuse, recycling, repair, and
remanufacturing infrastructure.
     One of the keys to a less materials-intensive economy,
according to the study, is redesigning consumer products to make
them lighter and more compact, as has already happened with
computers and to some extent with cars.  Equally important is a
move away from "planned obsolescence" and toward a new generation
of more durable and more easily repairable products.
     The Worldwatch researchers envision an accompanying
relocation of materials industries: "The mines of the future will
be the cities, not virgin mountainsides; the timber lots will be
old houses, not virgin forests; and steel mills will be located
near the junk yards and other sites where raw material is
available.  While virgin materials will continue to be needed,
they will only supplement recycled inputs, rather than vice
versa."
 
                             -- End --

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Jay
-- 
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"The market economy is replacing a complex organic
 environment with a simplified inorganic one, literally
 dissembling a biosphere that has supported humanity for
 countless millennia.  In the course of replacing the complex
 ecological relationships, on which all living things depend,
 with more elementary ones, capitalism is restoring the
 biosphere to a stage where it will be able to support only
 simpler forms of life. ... The earth will become incapable of
 supporting humanity itself." [Bookchin 1980:230-1]