Global Pattern in Materials Consumption: An Empirical Study

Abstract

This paper surveys the worldwide production of a basket of 98 important industrial materials between 1960 and 2013, divided into 9 main groups. The objective was to look for an answer to the question if it is possible to keep the global economy growing while simultaneously reducing the amount of materials resources necessary to maintain today’s growth rate. Our results were analyzed within the framework of the dematerialization theory and the decoupling concept, checking the temporal unfolding in the past 50 years of the most widely used industrial materials, aiming to identify trends in dematerialization in the usage of this set of materials. One of the most striking patterns to be noted in our results is the spike-like aspect of the increasing consumption of some key materials in the first decade of the present century, a trend that seems to resume in most recent years, and is interpreted as a consequence of China’s modernization in the past three decades. Our results do not support the conclusion that human society is experiencing dematerialization of the global economy, but some patterns found show that there are reasons for optimism.