Sustainable Metals Management

What's in a name? What, in particular, is metals management' all about? I suspect that my ' colleagues assumed that I would have a good answer, given that the endowed Sandoz Chair I occupied from 1992 until my retirement in 2000 was entitled Environment and Management, and at INSEAD I created a Center for Management of Environmental Resources (CMER). Metals are a subset of resources, et voila! However, in all honesty, management, as such, was never my core competence (to use another phrase popularized by business schools). Here comes the shocking secret. We used the word management in those titles because INSEAD is a business school where everything has to have an application to business. For my colleagues at INSEAD management is what we supposedly teach. Good management, they (we) think, distinguishes successful enterprises from unsuccessful ones. For some of our graduates, management is what they give professional advice to corporate clients about. For the rest of our graduates it is the umbrella word that describes their choice of career. The implication conveyed by our choice of words is that metals can be regarded as one category of environmental resources, and that resources including environmental resources can be managed, in somewhat the same way that a corporation can be managed. It is not even too far-fetched to suggest that long run sustainability might be a management problem.

Contains a broad range of contributions from science, industry, administration, NGOs Covers all three main aspects of sustainability: economical, ecological, and social Covers historical background, current status, and future options for sustainable development in the metals sector

Autorentext
Dr. Arnim von Gleich ist Professor für Technikbewertung an der Fachhochschule Hamburg.

Klappentext

Metals have been essential to human civilisation for many thousands of years. With a broad range of applications they have found their way into virtually every aspect of our daily lives. Their durable and recyclable properties should make them ideal materials for a sustainable economy. But can metals live up to this promise? What are the economic, ecological, and social implications of their increasing use? How can we secure the supply of high-quality metals in the future? Do we need substitutes for scarce or especially toxic metals? We will face many such questions on the path towards sustainable production, trade and use of metals.

This book brings together experts from many fields, with sometimes controversial opinions, to discuss the conditions and limits of a sustainable metals management. The ideas and goals of sustainability are not only explained theoretically, but also applied to various stages of the metal making and trading process. The unique feature of this book is its focus on the practical issues of sustainability and the eminent role that companies play in this respect. Experts take a look at the history of metals and metals processing, analyse the current flows and trends of their use, and try to predict future developments in production and trade. Others assess the ecological and social effects of their production and use, highlight the need for international and inter-organisational thinking, and lay out more efficient ways of pursuing this. All the contributors of this book are united by a common goal: making metals an economically, ecologically, and socially safe choice for the 21st century.

This book is a must-read for anyone interested in the short-term and long-term development of the production, trade and use of metals. It provides a wealth of information on the market, the ecological repercussions of the industry, and the social implications of the production and trade of metals.It is thus a valuable source for decision makers, scientists and campaigners in this field.

Inhalt
Sustainability and Metals.- Outlines of a Sustainable Metals Industry.- Metallic Raw Materials Constituents of Our Economy.- Economy, Thermodynamics, and Sustainability.- Aluminium.- Prospects for a Sustainable Aluminum Industry.- Towards a Sustainable Copper Industry?.- An Application of Exergy Accounting to Five Basic Metal Industries.- Entropy as a Measure for Resource Consumption Application to Primary and Secondary Copper Production.- Dematerialization of the Metals Turnover.- Sustainability Strategies in Field Trial.- Metals Materials Flows.- Limits of Metal Recycling.- Secondary Materials in Steel Production and Recycling.- Optimisation Possibilities of Copper Smelting and -Processing.- The Hamburger Aluminium-Werk GMBH's Contribution to a Sustainable Closed Loop Aluminium System.- Sustainable Use of Copper.- Ecological, Social, Toxicological, and Cultural Effects.- Heavy Metals in the Netherlands.- Toxic Effects of Metals and Metal Compounds.- Metallurgical Plants and Chemicals Industry as Challenges to Environmental Protection in the 19th Century.- Copper Mining and Metallurgy in Prehistoric and the More Recent Past.- Social and Ecological Consequences of the Bauxite-Energy-Aluminium Product Line.- The Ok Tedi Pages.- Product Design and Use.- Metals and Plastics - Competition or Synergy?.- Sustainability-Optimised Material Selection and Product Design at Audi.- Recycling of Electronic Waste Material.- Sustainable Development of Microelectronics Industry.- The Role of Metals for Designing Products and Solutions in the Context of a Sustainable Society.