Global annual material use reached 90 billion tons in 2017 and may double by 2050. This unsustainable growth has impacts on everything from landscape degradation and habitat loss to climate change and ecosystem pollution. In the June edition of Science Magazine Drs. Olivetti and Cullen discuss the main strategies that engineers and policymakers ought to consider to improve the sustainability of our material systems. These include an emphasis on designing products for reuse and recyclability from the outset rather than recklessly increasing the material complexity of components that then makes repurposing products increasingly difficult.

Elsa Olivetti and Jonathan Cullen
Science, 2018, 360 (6396) 1396-1398