THE ANTHROPOCENE - Plastics and Environmental Sustainability - page 19

development. Other materials such as sand, steel, cement, aluminum, and
plastics that rely on mineral supplies need to be mined out of the ground.
As long as extractible resources are available and the energy expenditure
in tapping/processing of these is affordable, these too are likely to be in
good supply. Based on today's conditions and technology, the embodied
energy and CO 2 footprint for representative materials are given in Figure
1.7 . Plastics are only moderately energy intensive to use, though not as
economical as materials such as concrete or wood.
Figure 1.7 Comparison of the embodied energy (J/kg) and CO 2 footprint
for different materials.
Source: Reprinted with permission from Ghenai (2012).
Industry requires a continuing supply of raw material to produce goods and
services. In effect, the purpose of the complex industrial machinery is to use
materials (some renewable and other not) to continuously produce goods