Evaluating sustainable production and consumption dynamics in complex product systems

1236447(巴比特)。这个项目将改编生物群落生态学领域的概念和模型，并将它们应用于分析采用动态、环境影响和整个消费产品“社区”的可持续管理战略。研究目标是1)建立一个基于群落生态学的新的产业生态框架，将可持续生产实践与消费趋势联系起来；以及2)应用该框架来应对消费电子产品的可持续性挑战，消费电子产品是全球社会快速增长和演变的组成部分。这项研究以生物群落生态学的基本概念和模型为基础，通过三条相互关联的研究路线来实施：1.采用基于群落生态学的多样性度量来表征家庭拥有的消费电子产品群落的结构，并调查产品功能和消费动态的潜在趋势；2.使用“社区级”生命周期评估和物质流分析来评估整个产品系统的环境影响(能源、材料、废物)，然后确定这种影响是如何随着社区多样性的发展而变化的；3.使用生态模型来确定决定社区结构及其随之而来的环境影响的外生力量和社区层面的产品相互作用，以便未来的环境管理战略能够有效地针对系统杠杆点。本研究首创的群落生态学视角为产品可持续管理中长期存在的挑战带来了新的视角。目前的方法，如生命周期评估和能效分析，侧重于“按产品”的影响。然而，单一产品或材料的增量变化带来的环境收益往往被消费者需求的增加所抵消。将相关产品群体视为一个生态群落，带来了多样性分析和结构方程模型等分析工具，对可持续生产和消费产生影响。评估的模型可能会改变我们评估和管理电子产品的方式，正如本项目所展示的那样，但也可以翻译到其他互动水平较高的部门(例如，可再生能源系统)。这项研究中嵌入的多学科是由一个项目团队实现的，该团队拥有横跨可持续发展评估、电子产品、生物生态学和技术建模的专业知识。电子产品在可持续发展方面面临着独特的挑战？生命周期，包括能源消耗的快速增长、温室气体的产生、稀缺矿物的需求和废物的产生。为电子产品开发的知识可以为政策制定提供信息，指导可持续的产品设计，向消费者传达最佳实践，优化回收系统，并将生命周期对环境的影响降至最低。对于整个工业生态领域来说，连接到新的生态领域和工具具有变革的潜力。这项工作可以刺激进一步的创新，以识别和利用以前未探索的生态隐喻和模型。为了实现这些好处，更广泛的影响活动将1)通过课程开发和广泛的研究传播促进多学科合作和教育；2)加强STEM学科中代表性不足的教师以及研究生和本科生的参与；3)通过数字推广和教育努力提高公众的科学素养；以及4)通过将研究成果转化为工业社区生态中的工业教育和培训计划，改善产学合作伙伴关系。

1236447 (Babbitt). This project will adapt concepts and models from the field of biological community ecology and apply them to analyze adoption dynamics, environmental impacts, and sustainable management strategies for an entire "community" of consumer products. Research goals are to 1) formulate a new industrial ecology framework based on community ecology to link sustainable production practices with consumption trends; and 2) apply this framework to address sustainability challenges of consumer electronic products, a rapidly growing and evolving component of global society. The research is grounded in fundamental concepts and models of biological community ecology and implemented in three interconnected lines of inquiry: 1. Adapt community ecology-based diversity metrics to characterize the structure of the community of consumer electronics products owned by households and investigate the underlying trends in product function and consumption dynamics; 2. Evaluate the environmental impacts (energy, materials, waste) for this entire product system using "community-level" life cycle assessment and material flow analysis and then determine how this impact changes as a function of evolving community diversity; and 3. Use ecological models to identify the exogenous forces and community-level product interactions that determine the community structure and its attendant environmental impacts so that future environmental management strategies can effectively target system leverage points. The community ecology perspective pioneered in this research brings a new perspective to long standing challenges in the sustainable management of products. Current approaches such as life cycle assessment and energy efficiency analysis focus on "per product" impacts. Environmental gains from incremental changes to a single product or material, however, are often offset by increased consumer demand. Treating groups of related products as an ecological community brings analytical tools such as diversity analysis and structural equation modeling to bear on sustainable production and consumption. The models evaluated can potentially transform the way we assess and manage electronic products, as demonstrated in this project, but are also translatable to other sectors with high levels of interaction (e.g., renewable energy systems). The multidisciplinarity embedded in this research is enabled by a project team with expertise spanning sustainability assessment, electronic products, biological ecology, and technological modeling. Electronics have unique sustainability challenges that span the products? life cycles, including rapid increases in energy consumption, greenhouse gas production, demand for scarce minerals, and waste generation. Knowledge developed for electronic products can inform policy making, guide sustainable product design, communicate best practices to consumers, optimize recycling systems, and minimize life cycle environmental impacts. For the industrial ecology field as a whole, there is transformational potential associated with connecting to new ecological domains and tools. This work could stimulate further innovation to identify and utilitize previously unexplored ecological metaphors and models. To realize these benefits, broader impact activities will 1) promote multidisciplinary collaboration and education through curriculum development and broad research dissemination; 2) enhance engagement of underrepresented faculty and graduate and undergraduate students in STEM disciplines; 3) increase public scientific literacy through digital outreach and education efforts; and 4) improve industry-academic partnerships by translating research findings for an industrial education and training program in industrial community ecology.