Heinz Schandl

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation | CSIRO · Division of Land and Water

The intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and industrial ecology (IE) is gaining significant attention due to AI's potential to enhance the sustainability of production and consumption systems. Understanding the current state of research in this field can highlight covered topics, identify trends, and reveal understudied topics warranting fu...

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has committed to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which necessitates accelerated progress in sustainable production and consumption. This study employs an economy‐wide material flow analysis to assess the ASEAN community's material use, waste generation, emissions, resource effic...

Accurate assessments of global primary material extraction, trade of primary materials and products, material use, waste, and emissions support the development of policies that facilitate the decoupling of economic activity, natural resource use, and related environmental impacts. Here, we quantify all crucial aspects of global and country‐by‐count...

Australia’s linear economic system hinders the collective pursuit of sustainability, equity, and well-being. As demands for housing, food, energy, transportation, and goods escalate, transitioning to a circular economy becomes imperative. Such a transition necessitates a transformation in business and governance models, as well as cultural shifts,...

Plastics waste is a significant issue in Australia, with plastics waste generation continuing to grow. Central to the ‘circular economy’ concept is the flow of waste materials back into production, to be remade into new products. However, in Australia these flows are not visible due to limitations in published datasets. In this study, a waste suppl...

Plastic is valued for its flexibility to be utilized in different applications, yet it poses a significant threat to our environment because of mismanaged plastic waste. India’s compound annual growth of plastic consumption has been around 7% for a decade. Despite this significant growth, there has not been a comprehensive study of Indian plastic f...

As the world’s second most consumed resource, sand is being depleted at an alarming rate. China accounted for nearly half of the world’s sand consumption in 2012. Here we present a material flow analysis of sand from 1995 to 2020 that shows China’s overall sand supply surged by approximately 400% over the study period, yet the proportion of natural...

The world is in the midst of a triple planetary crisis of climate change, biodiversity loss and pollution and waste. The global economy is consuming ever more natural resources, while the world is not on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goals. The scientific community has never before been more aligned or more resolute on the need for urg...

As cities grow, demand for urban materials is set to rise. Meeting sustainability targets will require transformative changes to how cities are constructed. Yet, accurate information on embodied building materials and their environmental impacts at the city scale is still lacking. We use Light Detection and Ranging data, building archetype informat...

This article presents a comprehensive economy‐wide material flow analysis of the Australian economy in 2019, examining the domestic extraction, trade, end‐of‐life flows, and recycling for all materials. The results highlight Australia's role as a natural resource supplier, with metals and fossil fuels being primary contributors. Through material fl...

Packaging in India comprises around 59% of total plastic consumption, with most of the waste originating from single‐use and short shelf‐life products. The plastic recycling industry is primarily made up of informal processing units which have predominantly been recycling Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) waste due to ease of availability, sorting,...

In 2019 the Australian Capital Territory (ACT) government stated an ambition to prioritise reduction of Scope 3 greenhouse gas emissions, the size of which had not been fully quantified previously. This study calculated the total carbon footprint of the ACT in 2018, including Scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions and modelled scenarios to reduce all emissions...

Improving resource efficiency (RE) is an important objective of the Sustainable Development Goals. In this study we find a strong exponential relationship between economic complexity index (ECI) and RE of countries. ECI measures the level of accumulated knowledge of a society enabling the products it makes. The relationship between ECI and RE is st...

Copper is a critical material for development and plays a profound role in transitioning to a low‐carbon future. China is the main copper consumer in recent decades that has a fast‐growing domestic market accompanied by active international trade. Given the large regional differences within China, it is relevant to understand the domestic driving f...

The construction and maintenance of residential, commercial, and industrial buildings are associated with a significant environmental footprint. Resource efficiency and innovation in the built infrastructure sector are essential for achieving sustainable development goals, and timely information is required to support sustainability policies in cit...

Plastic waste (PW) is one of the most rapid-growing waste streams in municipal solid waste all over the world. India has become a global player in the plastic value chain. Despite low consumption, domestic generation and imports create a significant burden on the overall waste management system, which requires in-depth understanding of the scenario...

This review article aims to suggest recycling technological options in India and illustrates plastic recycling clusters and reprocessing infrastructure for plastic waste (PW) recycling in India. The study shows that a majority of states in India are engaged in recycling, road construction, and co-processing in cement kilns while reprocessing capabi...

Sustainable development depends on decoupling economic growth from resource use. The material footprint indicator accounts for environmental pressure related to a country’s final demand. It measures material use across global supply-chain networks linking production and consumption. For this reason, it has been used as an indicator for two Sustaina...

Global material extraction has been growing rapidly for several decades, accelerated by increasing population and expansion of the built environment. Understanding the total in-use stock is identified as an important pillar to support information for sustainable development. However, knowledge of the in-use stock in the economically developing worl...

This article aims to provide a better understanding of the contribution of material efficiency (ME) improvements to climate mitigation from an economy‐wide perspective. We employ the Global Trade and Environment Model to investigate and quantify the part played by ME gains at different stages of the supply chain and in different sectors of the econ...

This industry and technology roadmap informs the Australian Government about the preparedness of industry and the Australian innovation system to collaboratively develop opportunities for waste innovation and a circular economy for plastics, glass, paper and tyres across the whole supply chain of these waste materials. It identifies strategies, ena...

National accounts for material stocks and flows are reported regularly by an increasing number of countries to promote a sustainable use of our natural resources. In this research we build upon the work of Herman Daly and Donella Meadows and propose a framework that links material stocks and flows to a conceptual hierarchy of ends and means which a...

Around two‐thirds of the global population will live in cities by 2050 requiring large urban infrastructure development. Decision‐makers and planners usually rely on standard economic accounting methods for urban planning and investments on infrastructure assets. However, standard methods fail to account for the ecosystem services benefits that liv...

As the largest user of primary materials globally China has made a commitment to rebuild its economy to a circular model and to enhance the efficiency of material use, which is spelled out in the Circular Economy Promotion Law. Measuring progress of the new policy requires datasets, metrics and indicators that monitor the performance of the economy...

The global economy relies on a continuous and ever-growing throughput of biomass, fossil fuels, metal ores and non-metallic minerals to build, maintain and fuel the infrastructure of cities and industrial systems. The amount of materials required year by year depends on population levels, the use of technologies in production systems, investment in...

The authors of this article propose a major revision of the processes used for assembling the metal ores component of economy wide material flow accounts (EW‐MFA). The case for doing this is built by describing in detail important shortcomings of current metal ores reporting systems, introducing the key features of the revised system being proposed...

Supply risks and shortages of fossil fuels are major challenges to the sustainable development of countries. In response to this challenge, the 12th main goal of the Sustainable Development Goals emphasizes the importance of sustainable consumption and production patterns for resource (including fossil fuels) sustainability. However, for China, the...

Over the last three decades, China has experienced the most dynamic economic development lifting living standards and resulting in fast‐growing use of natural resources. In the past, the focus has been on national MFA accounts which do not do justice to the second largest economy, home to 19% of the world population and having 30% of global materia...

My keynote presentation at the International Resource Sustainability Conference in Adelaide, Australia on 2 July 2019.

Environmental pollution is still a major source of damage to the health of the planet (well established), human health (well established), equity (well established) and economic sustainability (established but incomplete). The risks, however, are systemic and wide-ranging, including climate change, ecosystem and biodiversity loss, wildlife damage,...

The international community has set ambitious goals for global prosperity and protecting the planet, including the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals and environmental conventions such as the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and the United Nations Convention t...

Much is at stake as global society approaches the final decade before the Sustainable Development Goals are fixed to be realized in 2030. The international community has set high ambitions for global prosperity, the protection of our biological diversity and land resources, and limiting global warming. Progress towards these ambitions is within our...

In various international policy processes such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, an urgent demand for robust consumption‐based indicators of material flows, or material footprints (MFs), has emerged over the past years. Yet, MFs for national economies diverge when calculated with different Global Multiregional Input–Output (GMRIO) databases,...

This research employed a spatially explicit analysis to calculate the total material stock and demolition waste flows for Padua, a medium sized Italian city, for the period 1902-2007. The analysis of maps and aerial photographs allowed for the calculation of building lifespan, which grew until the second half of the twentieth century, but had a sha...

This data article reports the domestic processed output (DPO), balancing items, and solid waste potential for five major world economies (Australia, China, Germany, Japan, and the United States of America) for the years 1990–2015. The main DPO database assembles data from a number of national and international sources. Linking this with data on dom...

The topics of resource efficiency, pollution reduction and waste minimization have become important global policy goals and have gained prominence in developing countries in the context of the new Sustainable Development Goals. These pose challenges to the policy community in the formulation of plausible and ambi- tious targets for resource use, gr...

Our planet has provided resources and energy for our society and at the same time absorbed the emissions from our anthropogenic activities. The Paris Agreement and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development are our important commitments of people to combat climate change and ensure sustainable development. Lao PDR is a low-income developing countr...

The influential Word Resources Institute report The Weight of Nations of 2000 called for additional research effort to understand linkages between primary material inputs and output of waste and emissions in material flow accounts. The report proved highly influential in driving efforts toward methodological harmonization of national material flow...

Modern environmental and sustainability policy that acknowledges the linkages between socioeconomic processes and environmental pressures and impacts, and designs policies to decouple economic activity from environmental pressures and impacts, requires a sophisticated and comprehensive knowledge base. The concept of industrial metabolism provides a...

This report is the first outcome of an initiative to identify complementarities between the ASEAN Community Vision 2025 (ASEAN Vision 2025) and the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (2030 Agenda), and to support ASEAN Member States to implement the two agendas in an integrated way. The report presents a framework for identifyin...

In many Asian developing countries, policy makers face tension between the needs of economic growth, human development and environmental sustainability. In a similar vein, the new global agreement on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) calls for the harmonization of economic and environmental goals. To shed light on the relationship between the ec...

The way in which societies use and care for natural resources fundamentally shapes the well-being of humanity, the environment and the economy. Better and more efficient use of natural resources can be one of the most costefficient and effective ways to reduce impacts on the environment, while also achieving the socio-economic objectives of interna...

National material flow accounts have reached maturity over the past decade. Many countries, including the European Community and Japan, now report material flows as part of their national statistical reporting. Global and country by country data has been prepared by the International Resource Panel of United Nations Environment, filling a reporting...

Identifying which socioeconomic factors can explain differences in national sociometabolic profiles, and quantifying how well they do it, is relevant to the question of whether national-level material flows can be forecast accurately enough to inform policy. In this study, we employed panel analyses to test a wide range of socioeconomic variables w...

The growing extraction of natural resources and the waste and emissions resulting from their use are directly or indirectly responsible for humanity approaching or even surpassing critical planetary boundaries. A sound knowledge base of society’s metabolism, i.e., the physical exchange processes between society and its natural environment and the p...

Changing lifestyles in developing and emerging economies entail a shift in technology use, everyday practices, and resource consumption. It is important to understand the sustainability consequences of these changes and the potential for policy to guide practices toward more sustainable lifestyles. In this study, we investigate laundry practices in...

City carbon footprints have become an important tool for monitoring the progress of cities towards lowering their greenhouse gas emissions and contribution to climate change. Cities usually source a major part of their natural resource demand from their local, national and global hinterland, and cause emissions across the whole global supply chain...

Recent years have seen a growing interest in the potential for a more circular economy and the application of material flow accounting to increase knowledge on materials accumulating in in-use stocks. This study assesses the dynamics of stocks and flows related to road networks, which are a significant destination for recycled construction and demo...

Rapid urbanisation generates risks and opportunities for sustainable development. Urban policy and decision makers are challenged by the complexity of cities as social–ecological–technical systems. Consequently there is an increasing need for collaborative knowledge development that supports a whole-of-system view, and transformational change at mu...

In a previous report for the OECD Environment Directorate (Giljum et al., 2015), the state of scientific knowledge about the robustness and reliability of demand-based indicators of material flows to guide the OECD’s engagement in this domain was assessed. This report builds upon the results and recommendations of the previous study. The first obje...

The international industrial ecology (IE) research community and United Nations (UN) Environment have, for the first time, agreed on an authoritative and comprehensive data set for global material extraction and trade covering 40 years of global economic activity and natural resource use. This new data set is becoming the standard information sourc...

Assessing a physical dimension of the Lao economy through material flow analysis allows a fundamental understanding of resource use patterns in Laos. This study aims to quantify domestic extraction (DE), direct material input (DMI), domestic consumption (DMC), and physical trade balance (PTB) of Laos for several years. The material intensity and me...

This scientific assessment report on resource efficiency has been produced by the UN Environment’s International Resource Panel in response to a commission in June 2015 by the German Government, as an outcome of the G7 Summit meeting in Schloss Elmau. The report is based on the core work of the International Resource Panel, and of other internation...

Accurate assessments of construction materials stocked in the built environment have received increased attention in the Industrial Ecology literature over the past few years. Many recent models that estimate building material inflows, stock accumulation and end-of-life waste, however, rely on simplistic assumptions about the lifespan of built infr...

Significance A large part of all primary materials extracted globally accumulates in stocks of manufactured capital, including in buildings, infrastructure, machinery, and equipment. These in-use stocks of materials provide important services for society and the economy and drive long-term demand for materials and energy. Configuration and quantity...

Achieving sustainable development requires the decoupling of natural resource use and environmental pressures from economic growth and improvements in living standards. G7 leaders and others have called for improved resource efficiency, along with inclusive economic growth and deep cuts in global greenhouse emissions. However, the outlooks for and...

Despite accounting for almost 50% of global material use, nonmetallic minerals—mostly used for construction of buildings and infrastructure—are the material flow analysis (MFA) category with the highest uncertainty. The main reason for this is incomplete reporting in official national statistics because of ease of availability and the low per-unit...

In a globalized economy, the use of natural resources is determined by the demand of modern production and consumption systems, and by infrastructure development. Sustainable natural resource use will require good governance and management based on sound scientific information, data and indicators. There is a rich literature on natural resource man...

Over two centuries of economic growth have put undeniable pressure on the ecological systems that underpin human well-being. While it is agreed that these pressures are increasing, views divide on how they may be alleviated. Some suggest technological advances will automatically keep us from transgressing key environmental thresholds; others that p...