Sustainability: The materials role
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Sustainability: The Materials Role
LYLE H. SCHWARTZ
This lecture series began in 1971 focused on the links between materials, energy, and the environment. The issue of sustainability had emerged, but only as an exploration of the possibility of materials depletion in the face of predicted population growth. Today, sustainability implies a global economic and social system that both satisfies human needs and does not despoil the earth. What has been our role in this increasingly important arena of human concern and what should it be? Our report card is impressive. Improvements in processing, in materials substitution, in design to minimize materials usage, and in recycling of metals and polymers have all been remarkable. However, we are faced with twin dreadnoughts of change in the next decades: technological ascendency of developing nations and rising world population. Add to these the need to reduce the effluence of greenhouse gases and we must anticipate formidable technological upheaval throughout the materials cycle. Our professional societies need to step forward and play larger and significantly more visible roles in this arena. Working individually and in concert with others, the societies must broadcast our achievements, identify future areas for activity, support industrial road-mapping efforts, and join with all who will participate in clarifying the flow of materials throughout their life cycles.
I. INTRODUCTION
GOOD morning. I’m honored to have been asked to speak to you today, and humbled when I realize that my Dr. Lyle H. Schwartz was Director of the Materials Science and Engineering Laboratory (MSEL) of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) from 1984–1997, when he retired. He was responsible for NIST’s materials research, including more than 360 scientists, engineers, technicians, and support personnel, and an annual budget of approximately $65 million. The MSEL is responsible for providing the private sector and government agencies with data, measurement methods, standard reference materials, and new scientific concepts, which are fundamental to the development of high performance materials and to advances in materials processing. The programs support the measurement and standards infrastructure required for the safe, efficient, and economical use of materials to meet national needs. As chair of the NIST Laboratory Council, Schwartz led his colleagues, the directors of the other technical laboratories at NIST, in the development of a strategic plan for the laboratories, and in the organization and management of an extensive effort in technology transfer and government and METALLURGICAL AND MATERIALS TRANSACTIONS A
name has been added to the list of distinguished lecturers, so many of whom I have known and respected throughout my career. This lecture series began in 1971 with a presentation by
private sector partnerships. He chaired the National Science and Technology Council’s Subcommittee on Materials Technology and chaired its predecessor, COMAT. In both committees, mater
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