Peter Fantke

Abstract:

Ever-growing population and consumption has put continuously increasing pressure on our planet's health including humans, ecosystems, and natural resources [1]. At the same time, efficiency in production and techno-economic performance are the drivers of today's economy. These unsustainable global trends push our industrial civilization toward crossing our planet's boundaries for a resilient climate, functional geochemical cycles, and healthy environments [2]. To ensure that future technologies move away from contributing to an unsustainable future, we need a radical paradigm shift. New designs and developments need to be fundamentally aligned with sustainability constraints. Considering such constraints comes with several key requirements. We need to determine the physical limits of ecosystems, human health, and environmental assets for resources extraction, environmental pollution and global exposure. We also need to understand the complexity of environmental pressure of the thousands of new chemicals, materials and products entering the global market every year along their entire life cycle. Finally, we need to benchmark all new designs against the physical limits of our planet. Physics, material science, and sustainability assessment are all crucial elements to meet these requirements. This will ultimately lead to sustainability-driven innovation in technology design and development of absolutely sustainable products and supply chains [3].

[1] Steffen W, Broadgate W, Deutsch L, Gaffney O, Ludwig C. Anthrop. Rev. 2 (2015) 81-98.
[2] Steffen W, Richardson K, Rockström J, Cornell SE, Fetzer I, Bennett EM, et al. Science 347 (2015) 736-46.
[3] Fantke P, Illner N. Curr. Opin. Green Sustain. Chem. 15 (2019) 91-7.