Sustainable metals: integrating science and systems approaches

Area of Science:

• Materials Science
• Environmental Science
• Societal Systems

Background:

• Progress toward sustainability goals has been limited, necessitating new approaches.
• The Royal Society convened a discussion meeting on 'sustainable metals' to foster interdisciplinary dialogue.
• Climate change is identified as the most urgent sustainability concern.

Purpose of the Study:

• To enumerate major sustainability concerns and identify climate change as paramount.
• To discuss constraints on the scale and speed of technical innovation deployment.
• To explore the expanded role of scientists in sustainability efforts.

Main Methods:

• Enumeration of sustainability concerns.
• Discussion of technical innovation deployment constraints.
• Analysis of the societal role of scientific expertise.

Main Results:

• Existing technologies can be utilized differently to achieve sustainability goals.
• Many opportunities for optimizing current technologies have been overlooked.
• Scientific expertise is vital for both invention and realistic assessment of possibilities.

Conclusions:

• Rethinking the application of existing technologies is key to sustainability.
• Scientists must engage in societal discussions to identify viable pathways for change.
• Scientific expertise is critical for managing expectations regarding the scale and timing of solutions.