Circular Materials and Their Implementation for a Sustainable Future

This book provides a foundation for selection of materials, their products, circularity options and navigation of potential barriers across a wide spectrum of sectors to drive implementation of more sustainable options. Setting the scene with the basic principles for a circular society/circular economy, the book progresses to provide the relevant information about material options, covering their performance including structural and non-structural functionality, longevity and potential for circularity that can help inform which have the greatest potential to provide reliable performance across a wide spectrum of applications with the least impact on the environment. It describes the state of the art in terms of circularity options of materials for different applications and considers the best potential future options. Important aspects of design to provide impact minimalization are covered by experts in the field and those at the grass-roots level including design for reuse and design for adaptability alongside guidance on methods based on life cycle analysis to support the most informed decision such that we can hand on the best possible world to future generations. This book is targeted to be accessible to a wide audience including high school and tertiary level students (from foundation level), industry, policy makers, practitioners and consumers (interested general public) to support discussion and thinking to inform individual, collective, commercial, policy and research decisions that affect the way materials flow through our society. The over-riding principle is “experts making information accessible”.