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The digital sharing economy is commonly thought to promote sustainable consumption and improve material efficiency through better utilization of existing product stocks. However, the cost savings and convenience of using digital sharing platforms can ultimately stimulate additional demand for products and services. As a result, some or even all of the expected environmental benefits attributed to sharing could be offset, a phenomenon known as the rebound effect. Relying on a unique dataset covering over 750,000 food items shared in the United Kingdom through a free peer‐to‐peer food‐sharing platform, we use econometric modeling, geo‐spatial network analysis, and environmentally extended input–output analysis to quantify how much of the expected environmental benefits attributed to sharing are offset via rebound effects under seven re‐spending scenarios. We find that rebound effects can offset 59–94% of expected greenhouse gas (GHG) emission reduction, 20–81% of expected water depletion benefits, and 23–90% of land use benefit as platform users re‐spent the money saved from food sharing on other goods and services. Our results demonstrate that rebound effects could limit the potential to achieve meaningful reductions in environmental burdens through sharing, and highlight the importance of incorporating rebound effects in environmental assessments of the digital sharing economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial transactions are increasingly used by consumer apps and financial service providers to estimate consumption-based carbon emissions. This approach promises a low-resource, ultra-fast, and highly scalable approach to measuring emissions at different levels of potential policy intervention--spanning the national, subnational, local, and individual level. Despite this potential, there is a lack of research exploring the validity of this approach to carbon profiling. Here we address this oversight in three ways. First, we provide a step-by-step description of our approach toward estimating carbon footprints from micro-level transaction data generated by more than 100,000 customers of a large retail bank in theUnitedKingdom. Second, we quantitatively compare emission estimates obtained from transaction data with those calculated from a more standard data source used in carbon profiling, the largest household expenditure survey in the United Kingdom. Third, we offer a detailed qualitative comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of transactions versus alternative data sources (such as survey data), across key dimensions including data availability, data quality, and data detail. We find that financial transactions offer a credible alternative to survey-based sources and, if made more widely accessible, could provide important advantages for profiling emissions. These include objective, micro-level data on consumption behaviors, larger sample sizes, and longitudinal, frequent data capture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Circular economy is a widely discussed topic in the field of industrial renovation and environmentally responsive economies. The current economic and industrial model, which is termed as the produce–use–dispose model, is a linear model in which the resource is lost forever after utilisation. In addition to economic impact, disposal of the waste products creates an immense pressure on the environment. For this reason, scholars are trying to find an effective solution to this problem by ensuring the reuse of the resources that are used. The concept of the circular economy ensures the re-cycling and reuse of the resources and closes the resource loop. The circular economy challenges the produce–use–dispose concept and focuses on the reuse of resources. In a world of scarce resources, policies to recycle and reuse resources increase opportunities for economic growth. Scholars are increasingly researching the concept of a circular economy to improve efficiencies and improve industrial ecology. This study considers these ideas and identifies the opportunities and barriers of the circular economy transition. To achieve the goals of the study, the researchers reviewed 10 UK leading retailers and after the analysis have found that environmental awareness, stakeholder pressure and government rules and regulations have driven retailers to embrace the circular business model in their operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a semi‐quantitative review of measures to achieve net‐zero greenhouse gas emissions ("decarbonization") in the cementitious materials (CMs) cycle, that is, activities directly related to cement spanning extraction through to end of life. It focuses on the United Kingdom and Europe in order to relate these measures, comprising emissions, energy, and material efficiency, to the policy landscape. We summarize our findings in an annotated CMs cycle, produced by reconciling the diverse yet relatively underdeveloped literature on the topic, to quantify decarbonization potentials of the various measures in a systematic manner. We find that decarbonization measures with significant potential exist along the entire CMs cycle, although upstream (of use), energy, and emission efficiency measures are better quantified than downstream (of use) and material efficiency measures. Notably, the decarbonization potentials of recycling technologies and the ways in which technological advancements may transform the CMs cycle and thus the stocks, flows, and processing of materials, as well as effectiveness of decarbonization measures, are poorly understood. Therefore, this paper provides a basis to systematically understand the effects of emissions, energy, and material efficiency measures on decarbonization of the CMs cycle and, in this context, the interplay between technology, economic actors, and policy. This article met the requirements for a gold–gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Increased recycling and reuse rates are a central part of the objectives laid out by the COP21. Nonetheless, the practical implementation of what has been called the circular economy, as well as its true potential, are not easily established. This is because the impact and implementation time scales of any intervention depend on knowing the lifetime of products, which is frequently unknown. This is particularly true in construction, responsible for 39% of worldwide emissions, 11% of which are embodied. Most material flow analysis (MFA) models will simply assume a range of plausible life expectancies when bottom‐up data are lacking. In this work, we propose a novel method of identification using the high quality but highly aggregated trade data available and use it to establish a "mortality curve" for buildings and other long‐lasting products. This identification method is intended to provide more reliable inputs to existing MFA models. It is widely applicable because of the general availability of the underlying data. Using it on United Kingdom trade data, we identify product classes at 1 year for packaging/home scrap, 1 to around 10 years for vehicles/equipment, and around 50 years for construction. The identification approach was then validated by using classical approaches using bottom‐up data for vehicles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy and material flows and material stocks are key requirements for the supply of goods and services, which in turn support societal development. However, most resource accounting methods restrict the analysis to resource flows, which fails to acknowledge the increasing role of in‐use stocks in service provision. Using the UK transport sector as a case study, we undertook a material flow analysis through the lens of the stock–flow–service (SFS) nexus. We used the latter to identify how steel consumption and accumulation in vehicles contributed to passenger mobility between 1960 and 2015. Our results show that the efficiency of the steel stock contained in cars and motorcycles decreased from 37.5 to 28.0 passenger‐km (pkm)/kg‐year. The steel service for buses decreased from 63.6 to 32.1 pkm/kg‐year, while that of the national railway increased from 23.8 to 70.3 pkm/kg‐year steel. London Underground steel stock–service efficiency improved from 31.5 to 57.0 pkm/kg‐year steel. The annual fraction of flows that maintained the steel stock varied according to vehicle category and was between 3.4% and 8.2%. In terms of the stock expansion rate, the greatest change (on average, an annual increase of 3%) was that of "cars and motorcycles." This reflects the demographic transitions and the growing consumer demand for car‐based mobility. We discussed how the SFS nexus contributes to a more comprehensive form of resource accounting and reflect upon some of its limitations and how they might be addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Energy is required both to build the capital stock and to produce goods and services from the use of the capital stock. These two energy demands are together constrained by the available energy in the macroeconomy. Here, I develop a mathematical theory expressing the relationship between available energy and the capital stock as a first‐order differential equation. Three specific solutions are derived for the cases of a steady‐state economy with fixed capital stock, for an economy with a linearly increasing capital stock, and for an exponentially growing capital stock. Empirical data for the United Kingdom's nineteenth century economy are used to examine the energy required to access energy supplies; the energy intensity of capital formation; and the energy intensity of capital use. Magnitudes and trends in the energy intensity of capital use differ for four sectors of the economy—mining, residential, utilities, and railways. Data for the United Kingdom's ratio of available energy to capital from 1850 to 1913, are examined for the case of a linearly increasing capital stock. This corroborates the overall theoretical model and demonstrates that the change in energy to capital ratio is impacted by the magnitude of the capital stock. Further analysis of the mining sector shows that higher coal prices follow after increases in capital investment and increased coal production. This helps demonstrate how energy constraints play out in the macroeconomy. This article met the requirements for a gold – gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the nature of energy embodied in economies is essential to assessing their potential to grow or transform sustainably. As the first country to undergo industrialization, study of the United Kingdom during the Industrial Revolution is particularly important for understanding transformational processes. Historical accounts describe how exploitation of Britain's coal reserves supported the evolution of steel production, railways, and other industries; yet reconstructions of the UK's eighteenth/nineteenth century economy have found relatively small contributions from coal mining to economic growth. Here, economic input‐output models for 1841 and 1907 are used to calculate the coal embodied in capital investment, consumption, and exports. Most of the coal was embodied in consumption in 1841, with coal embodied in exports growing particularly fast by 1907. The coal embodied in capital was smaller, but the energy intensity of investment was about four times larger than the energy intensity of consumption. The coal embodied in building the capital stock, much of it used for production of materials such as iron, steel, and bricks, was important for economic growth and transformation. Using historical proxy data, it is estimated that ∼1.1 billion imperial tons of coal (34,000 PJ) were used to build the UK's capital assets between 1760 and 1913. The conceptual model developed here helps to explain the role of energy in economic growth and is important to contemporary sustainable development. This article met the requirements for a gold – gold JIE data openness badge described at http://jie.click/badges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Projections of UK greenhouse gas emissions estimate a shortfall in existing and planned climate policies meeting UK climate targets: the UK's mitigation gap. Material and product demand is driving industrial greenhouse gas emissions at a rate greater than carbon intensity improvements in the economy. Evidence shows that products can be produced with fewer carbon intensive inputs and demand for new products can be reduced. The economy‐wide contribution of material productivity and lifestyle changes to bridging the UK's mitigation gap is understudied. We integrate an input‐output framework with econometric analysis and case study evidence to analyse the potential of material productivity to help the UK bridge its anticipated emissions deficits, and the additional effort required to achieve transformative change aligned with 2 and 1.5°C temperature targets. We estimate that the emissions savings from material productivity measures are comparable to those from the Government's planned climate policy package. These additional measures could reduce the UK's anticipated emissions deficit up to 73%. The results demonstrate that material productivity deserves greater consideration in climate policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Graphical abstract Highlights • In-use and hibernating stocks of personal electronics are characterized by a bottom-up method. • Students' behaviors towards obsoleting, hibernating and recycling of personal electronics are explored. • Lifetimes of small electronics by university students are shorter than general population in China. • University students have the intention of choosing online recycling platforms to dispose of obsolete electronics. • University should be treated as a kind of distinct urban mines for small electronics. Abstract To evaluate the urban mining potentials of university, we characterize in-use and hibernating stocks of personal electronics possessed by university students in Jiangsu Province, China. Students' behaviors towards disposing of personal electronics are also explored, including obsolescence, hibernation and recycling. Mainly based on a questionnaire survey, the results firstly show that by per capita, in-use stocks of personal electronics owned by university students are basically higher than average household has in China. Average age of these in-use electronics is between 1.6 and 3.5 years, with mobile phones and tablet personal computers having the shortest in-use time. The lifespan of all personal electronics possessed by university students is shorter than by general residents, indicating their different consuming and disposal habits. Regarding the hibernating stocks, mobile phone has the highest hibernating level of 0.83 unit per capita, yet the level is half of that among university students living within the UK. In regard to disposal behaviors of university students, it is displayed that over a half of replacing practice happened because of the functional damage of old electronics. However, due to reasons like lacking recycling facilities and concerns for information security, 58% of the participants chose to keep these old electronics instead of reuse or recycling them, making university a potential distinct urban mine containing a large amount of valuable resources. We further find that university students have the intention of choosing online recycling platforms to dispose of their obsolete electronics so long as they are fully aware of the importance of recycling behaviors and the platform can provide nice user experience. Several suggestions are finally provided about how to exploit urban mines of university. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The conceptual framework of industrial symbiosis (IS) is gaining recognition for ensuring the conservation of natural resources and resilience of socio-ecological surroundings. Significant scholastic strides have been made for explaining the conceptual paradigm of IS. The current study relied upon the Bibliometric mapping technique to decipher the contemporary orientations in the recent publications (2007-2017). The findings revealed that China, UK and the USA are the pivot for promoting research interests in the field. The loci of IS research was observed more skewed in favour of economically developed and industrialized countries. The findings of this study also acknowledge a growing propensity towards research collaboration between and among nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the role of institutional capacity-building through industrial symbiosis in the development of a circular economy. Actors directly or indirectly involved within the National Industrial Symbiosis Programme (NISP) in the UK, including companies, government agencies, industrial symbiosis promoters, academia, the media and NGOs, were interviewed. Content analysis was used to make inferences from the interviews. Our results indicate that institutional capacity is created through interactions between a favorable institutional field and the identification of business opportunities by actors. It was found that NISP increased its institutional capacity to develop industrial symbiosis by increasing knowledge and relational resources and by promoting its capacity for mobilization. We identified the forces that are driving the shift from the current and traditional linear material and energy flows to a circular economy. Overall the study indicates that the UK government is playing a vital role in building and maintaining an industrial symbiosis coordination network, but that ultimately other actors and driving forces will be necessary if the cyclical flow of materials and energy and systemic thinking are to be achieved. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Low levels of plastics circularity today reflect major challenges for the sector to reduce environmental impacts and a need for wider systemic change. In this work, we investigated the potential for climate and socioeconomic benefits of circular economy (CE) interventions in the plastic packaging system. By means of a mixed-unit input-output (IO) model, we performed a comparative scenario analysis for the development of demand and waste management up to 2030 within the EU-28 (EU27 + United Kingdom). We modeled the development of material flows and assessed the effects of both demand-side and end-of-life interventions. Different levels of ambition toward 2030 based on EU circular economy strategies were tested. Results showed that on reaching high levels of circularity, between 14 and 22 Mt CO 2 -eq/year could be reduced by 2030 (20-30% of the total sector impact in 2018) compared to business-as-usual. Demand change (e.g., by decreasing product packaging intensities) showed similar emission-saving potential as achieving the current recycling target of 55%, which emphasizes the role of demand-side actions. Most scenarios displayed moderate employment gains and potential economic losses, pertaining to both direct and indirect activity shifts in the economy. While considering model limitations, the approach is useful in indicating potential first-order effects of system changes.

Industrial symbiosis has been identified as a strategy to increase resource efficiency, lower carbon emissions and increase business growth. One type of industrial symbiosis is the innovative use of wastes from one company as a resource for another company. However, empirical understanding of implementing waste-to-resource innovations, and hence how they can be promoted by public and private organisations, is still limited. Therefore this study explored how companies implemented waste-to-resource innovations in the Humber region, UK. Five case studies were conducted with companies that used or supplied a secondary biomass resource for power generation or fuel manufacturing. This article discusses how companies developed relations with biowaste resource suppliers or clients. The results expanded operational understanding of waste-to-resource innovation processes as it revealed companies' activities and their strategic considerations. Comparing the case studies, the social processes through which relations between biowaste resource partners developed were largely similar. However, two different networking strategies were identified. Some companies had to engage new industries and therefore diversified their resource partners during the innovation process, but strived to limit the number of resource partners once the innovation was realised. Conversely, others expanded activities within their network and hence strengthened existing relations during the innovation, but strived to increase the number of resource partners afterwards to manage risky over-dependencies within their supply network. Finally, resource security, economic benefits and policy and regulation were of key importance. To conclude, operational and strategic insights to promote the uptake of waste-to-resource innovations are presented, however, further research is necessary before broad generalizations can be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Against the trend prevalent during the 1990s and 2000s, large-scale infrastructural projects have made a comeback in the water sector. Although sometimes framed as part of a broader sustainable transition, the return of big infrastructure is a much more complicated story in which finance has played a crucial role. In the following article, we explore this encounter between finance and water infrastructure using the case of Britain's first experiment in desalination technologies, the Thames Water Desalination Plant (TWDP). On the surface, the plant appears to be a classic example of the successes of normative industrial ecology, in which sustainability challenges have been met with forward-thinking green innovations. However, the TWDP is utterly dependent on a byzantine financial model, which has shaped Thames Water's investment strategy over the last decade. This article returns to the fundamental question of whether London ever needed a desalination plant in the first place. Deploying an urban political ecology approach, we demonstrate how the plant is simultaneously an iconic illustration of ecological modernization and a fragile example of an infrastructure-heavy solution to the demands of financialization. Understanding the development of the TWDP requires a focus on the scalar interactions between flows of finance, waste, energy and water that are woven through the hydrosocial cycle of London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper provides an in-depth analysis of the links between dematerialisation and climate change mitigation. Methods used for material flow analyses (MFA) within the wider context of industrial ecology (which includes a focus on all resource flows in an economy, not purely material tonnage) tend to focus either on detoxification and pollution reduction or dematerialisation and resource productivity. An environmentally extended input–output (EEIO) model incorporates both aspects, which need to be dealt with when looking at how to meet challenging greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets. The approach understands both production systems and consumption patterns and has the ability through scenarios to analyse the (GHG) effectiveness of a wide range of material efficiency options. This analysis adopts an environmentally extended input–output approach to assess the role of material efficiency measures in reducing UK GHG emissions by 2050. A method for projecting the variables and parameters in the model, including the supply of and demand for materials and products, is presented and applied to investigate thirteen material efficiency strategies in the UK. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This article presents the trends of two indicators measuring fossil resource consumption in the United Kingdom (UK). First, a domestic material consumption (DMC) indicator for fossil resources (DMCfossil) in the mass unit million tonnes is calculated. DMCfossil shows that between 1970 and 2000 UK fossil resource consumption decreased by 10%, which suggests absolute dematerialization for this resource. Investigation into the mix of fossil resources during this period highlighted the shift from the heavy fossil resource coal to the lighter, more energy-dense natural gas, which resulted in decreased mass of resource required. Second, an alternative indicator, resource consumption by a nation (RCN) for fossil resources (RCNfossil) was calculated, which includes the indirect fossil resources attributable to traded goods and is measured in million tonnes of oil equivalent. RCNfossil shows that between 1970 and 2000 United Kingdom's fossil resource consumption increased by 14%, which emphasizes that even though there has been a decrease in the mass of fossil resources demanded, it has been accompanied by an increase in the volume of resource consumed. Additionally, deconstruction of RCNfossil shows that indirectly used resources attributable to exports and imports for the United Kingdom are significant. RCNfossil indicates that on the basis of past trends, fossil resources attributable to UK imports will overtake fossil resources attributable to its exports, which will make it dependent on imported resources. We conclude that further debate on appropriate aggregate and complementary indicators is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we apply geodemographic consumer segmentation data in an input−output framework to understand the direct and indirect carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions associated with consumer behavior of different lifestyles in the United Kingdom. In a subsequent regression analysis, we utilize the lifestyle segments contained in the dataset to control for aspects of behavioral differences related to lifestyles in an analysis of the impact of various socioeconomic variables on CO2 emissions, such as individual aspirations and people's attitudes toward the environment, as well as the physical context in which people act. This approach enables us to (1) test for the significance of lifestyles in determining CO2 emissions, (2) quantify the importance of a variety of individual socioeconomic determinants, and (3) provide a visual representation of “where” the various factors exert the greatest impact, by exploiting the spatial information contained in the lifestyle data. Our results indicate the importance of consumer behavior and lifestyles in understanding CO2 emissions in the United Kingdom. Across lifestyle groups, CO2 emissions can vary by a factor of between 2 and 3. Our regression results provide support for the idea that sociodemographic variables are important in explaining emissions. For instance, controlling for lifestyles and other determinants, we find that emissions are increasing with income and decreasing with education. Using the spatial information, we illustrate how the lifestyle mix of households in the United Kingdom affects the geographic distribution of environmental impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the implications of material flows and mass balance analysis in Great Britain for waste management. A study titled "The Mass Balance Movement: The Definitive Reference for Resource Flows Within the UK Environmental Economy" aims to widen and develop an understanding of the mass balance process. According to the author, material flow analysis is at the core of the proactive waste policy.

A determination of the sustainability performance of a company ought to fulfill certain requirements. It has to take into account the direct impacts from on-site processes as well as indirect impacts embodied in the supply chains of a company. This life cycle thinking is the common theme of popular footprint analyses, such as carbon, ecological, or water footprinting. All these indicators can be incorporated into one common and consistent accounting and reporting scheme based on economic input−output analysis, extended with data from all three dimensions of sustainability. We introduce such a triple-bottom-line accounting framework and software tool and apply it in a case study of a small company in the United Kingdom. Results include absolute impacts and relative intensities of indicators and are put into perspective by a benchmark comparison with the economic sector to which the company belongs. Production layer decomposition and structural path analysis provide further valuable detail, identifying the amount and location of triple-bottom-line impacts in individual upstream supply chains. The concept of shared responsibility has been applied to avoid double-counting and noncomparability of results. Although in this work we employ a single-region model for the sake of illustration, we discuss how to extend our ideas to international supply chains. We discuss the limitations of the approach and the implications for corporate sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the effects of climate change and ecodesign and offers updates on the issues and trends in the field. It reports that modeling is being carried out by the government of Great Britain, business and community organization. The call for immediate response to climate change is continuous, particularly the need for more ecodesign and rapid innovation for sustainability. These projects include Sustainable Everyday Project (SED) and the recent Design of the Times (DOTT) project in Great Britain.

This article examines the changing food production and consumption system of yogurt in the United Kingdom, focusing on the environmental impact of the yogurt processing stage from a technological perspective. Based on interviews with key industry stakeholders, we describe the evolution of the yogurt industry since the 1950s, characterized by a shift toward industrialized mass production and increased product diversity. We explain how new technologies, sociopolitical trends, and industrial strategies have shaped the evolution of the industry over this period. Moreover, we argue that the environmental impact of the current yogurt production and consumption system has been determined to a large extent by technological change. The article explores the future of the yogurt production and consumption system, considering the environmental implications of increased production of more differentiated yogurt products and how technological change may mitigate some of those impacts. The analysis reveals that to appreciate the environmental impact of the yogurt industry, policy makers should not focus simply on the primary stage of production but on all stages of the yogurt production and consumption system. Minimizing waste and improving resource efficiency at the yogurt processing stage are found to be particularly important. Transformation to an alternative yogurt production and consumption system with substantially lower environmental impacts requires significant commitment to change across the industry and the wider sociotechnical landscape. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an analysis of the use of iron and steel in the UK and explores how much of the iron and steel is recycled when it becomes obsolete after use. The first part of this paper series investigated production and consumption trends of iron and steel in the UK, whereas this paper focuses on scrap generation and recycling. Information on the amounts of iron and steel going into different groups of goods, together with values for their estimated lifetimes, have enabled modelling of the annual release of iron and steel from the use phase in the form of end-of-life scrap. This is an application to material flow accounting of the theory of residence time distributions used routinely in chemical reaction engineering. By comparing modelled generation of scrap with actual scrap consumption in the UK, we obtain estimates of loss or accumulation of iron and steel scrap in the UK. The model indicates that as much as 30% of the scrap that was potentially available in 2001 as end-of-life scrap has either been accumulated within the economic system or lost to landfill. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper presents a detailed account of the supply chain for iron and steel in the UK, using material flow analysis. Due to the lack of a universally agreed methodology of material flow analysis, we include an explanation of the accounting methodology employed in the study. Data for the supply chain has been collected reaching back three decades, enabling analysis of trends in production and consumption of iron and steel over the years. This first part of a series of two papers quantifies the iron and steel flows through the UK economy including the annual amount of iron and steel embodied in all final goods that enter the use phase in the UK. The second part explores the more elusive flows of scrap generation and recycling. In this first paper we show that the UK no longer has the capacity to recycle the scrap it collects and is increasingly relying on foreign economies to do so. We also observe that trade in iron and steel products and ferrous metal containing final goods has increased dramatically over the years, but remained relatively balanced. Today, one-half of UK''s iron and steel production is exported, whereas one-half of the iron and steel entering the UK use phase comes from imported final goods. The efficiency with which the UK iron and steel industry transforms iron ore and scrap into iron and steel products has increased substantially. However, there is no significant downward trend in the absolute level of iron and steel use in the UK. Between 1970 and 1981 the annual amount of steel put to use dropped from 16.4 to 10.7 million metric tonnes but climbed back up to 15 million metric tonnes twice since then. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The UK Sustainable Development Strategy requires that society strive to make prudent use of natural resources so as to protect the environment and maintain high and stable levels of economic growth and employment. The Waste Strategy for England and Wales emphasises the need to reduce the amount of waste produced through the adoption of waste minimisation methodology. Waste minimisation clubs have been a key element in the UK programme to introduce more sustainable practice into industry and commerce. Northamptonshire, a county in the East Midlands of England, has benefited from 20 waste minimisation/resource efficiency projects, within a county programme, that have run between 1997 and 2004. This is the largest number in any county in England. This has been possible because of the formation of a large and inclusive partnership that contains all the key Local and Regional players. Performance Indicators have been developed to direct the county programme as it strives to introduce more sustainable waste management practice. The Northamptonshire model has led to a catalysed uptake of sustainable waste management practice in some 574 companies, some 13.4% of participating companies in England in same period, thereby contributing to the maintenance of stable levels of economic activity. However, an inherent limit has been reached with waste minimisation club provision. Future provision for resource efficiency must include the movement towards Industrial Symbiosis (IS) and ultimately Industrial Ecology (IE). The radical shift towards IS and IE will occur as a response to the increased quantification of the resource flows, in a given UK economic area, and the deeper understanding of the diversity and complexity of the systems. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper reviews the factors influencing the development and sustained operation of regional industrial symbiosis (IS) networks and discusses the roles a coordination body can play to alter these factors so as to catalyse the development and functioning of such networks. These are analysed within the context of experiences gained in the early stages of three regional IS programmes under development in the UK, and of the recently launched national IS programme (NISP) that they are part of. It is stated that the policy framework in the UK has elements supportive of such networks to evolve, and the regional public bodies are favouring their development. Based on differences among studied cases, it is argued that the nature of companies’ operations and industrial history in the regions, the extent of peer pressure, the positioning of the coordinating body in the region, and its approach to awareness raising and recruitment have major influence on the progress of the programmes. Finally, the paper emphasises the importance of aligning the characteristics of emerging operations with the longer-term sustainability requirements. If accepted, this challenge assigns additional responsibilities to the coordinating parties. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The transfer of materials from the natural environment to the urban and industrially built environment produces two broad impacts on the landscape: a removal of materials from the earth's surface (a change in geomorphology) and the accumulation of a stock of concrete and other materials elsewhere in cities and industrial zones (a change in urban morphology). Thus, industrial activity transforms natural landscapes and, in doing so, has to be considered to be a geological and geomorphological agent. On the global scale, the deliberate shift of around 57,000 Mt (megatons)/yr of materials through mineral extraction processes exceeds the annual transport of sediment to the oceans by rivers (some 22,000 Mt/yr) by almost a factor of three. On the island of Britain, the total deliberate shift of earth-surface materials is between 688 and 972 Mt/yr, depending on whether or not the replacement of overburden in opencast coal mining is taken into account.The export of sediment to the oceans by rivers is only 10 Mt/yr whereas the export of materials in solution is about 40 Mt/yr, making the deliberate materials shift nearly 14 times larger than the shift caused by natural processes. Processes examined by industrial ecology, such as direct excavation, urban development, and waste dumping are those most driving changes in the shape of the British landscape today.These transformations pose added costs. Industrial ecology will produce an understanding of the hidden costs associated with these transformations. Such an understanding will help in planning and encouraging the reuse of materials everywhere and in identifying the key areas for intervention to reduce off-site geomorphological impacts and costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Continued expansion of UK material stocks, at ∼1% per year. • Increasingly, stock-building materials are imported, end-of-life material exported. • Efficiency gains in building and operating stocks counteracted by stock expansion. • Material stocks coupled to GDP, first signs of relative decoupling since ∼1995. Material stocks are the physical basis of production and consumption and shape the dynamics of resource use and socio-economic outcomes. We present an inflow-driven, long-term estimation of material stocks for the United Kingdom, covering 12 major materials from 1800 to 2017. We find the trajectory of the UK's stocks characterized by slow increases during the 19th century, followed by rapid growth and a slowdown in recent years. After a slump following the 2007/8 financial crisis, stock growth again accelerated to currently ∼1% per year. Per capita stocks barely increased during the 19th century. Proliferation far beyond population growth only started after WWI and pushed stocks to currently ∼272 tons/capita. Since WWI, material requirements for stock growth constituted a large share of domestic material consumption, indicating the importance of stock stabilization for reducing the size of societies' metabolism. We find that materials required for stock buildup were increasingly imported, while more and more end-of-life metals and paper were exported. Over the past 60 years, energy and CO 2 efficiency of stock operation and production improved, but absolute savings were curtailed by ongoing stock expansion. Material stocks grew tightly coupled to GDP, since ∼1995 showing first signs of relative decoupling. Alongside more than a doubling of per capita stocks from 1961 to 2005, life expectancy increased constantly but slowly. Interestingly, the indicator 'life satisfaction' remained fairly constant over that period. Directly targeting material stocks, for efficiency improvements but also limiting their ongoing expansion, is a crucial lever towards more sustainable resource use in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]