Overview
The Materials Management Program is guided by the 2050 Vision for Materials Management. The vision lists three high-order goals: protect the environment, conserve resources and enhance wellbeing. It also identifies four pathways for action: foundational knowledge, collaborations and partnerships, education and outreach, and informed policy.
Material systems research supports the goals of the vision by filling knowledge gaps, strengthening the foundation for informed public policy, outreach and engagement, and creating opportunities for meaningful collaborations between public, private industry, academia and Tribal actors.
The Materials Management Program uses a life cycle approach to estimate the environmental impacts of products and services used in Oregon. This approach looks at all the material resources needed to make a thing starting from extracting the raw ingredients, to manufacturing, then using and disposing it at the end of its useful life. It provides a detailed look at different kinds of environmental impacts along the whole production-consumption chain. This way of assessing the sustainability of things is helpful but leaves out many important connections that negatively affect people and places over long time periods.
A systems perspective allows us to reflect environmental changes, burdens on people (e.g., health and labor), and longer-term effects on communities, ecosystems and more-than-human life. In short, a systems approach offers ways to see fuller relationships between quality of air, water, land and the wellbeing of people and nature. It helps inform better decisions, design choices and policy.
Industrial, economic, social and ecological systems are interconnected. Foundational understanding about emergent pollutants at the systems level is essential for regional resilience, the health of people, and critical ecosystems functions of soil, freshwater and marine environments and the air. The continued productivity of our land-based agriculture, aquaculture, and wildlife including salmon are vital to the regional food systems, and a systems approach allows for considered steps that strengthen those resources with changing environmental stresses. To better serve the diverse residents of Oregon, improved understanding about emerging concerns is necessary to inform actions, solutions and polices.
Systems level foundational research matters because:
The material systems that enable the Oregonian way of life include food production, built environment, waste management, quality of air, water and soil and exposure to toxicants are all interconnected. This is demonstrated by the Consumption-Based Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory 1990-2021, that accounts for all the things we produce in our economy and all that we purchased from the world outside Oregon to support how we live in Oregon.
There are many routes of exposure to pollutants such as toxic chemicals and microplastics that require broad and comprehensive ways of understanding the changes affecting land, water and air.
A systems perspective can bring together different expertise for a more complete view of an issue. Working collaboratively brings together resources and expertise across academia, public agencies, tribes, sectors, and residents, to strengthen regional economy and improve our collective quality of life.
Systems research topics are large and expansive and need multiple ways of approaching problems and people with different scientific and lived experiences to participate. Cooperation, collaboration and voluntary initiatives are important ways of working together to understand complex interrelated issues. The research areas and specific initiatives highlighted on this page are examples of relational work bringing together cooperatives between public agency, regional academia, businesses and sector actors, Tribal Confederacies, and residents in diverse communities across the state. Working collaboratively allows us to share expertise, resources, and funding to generate knowledge and solutions that are regionally relevant.
Materials management focus areas
- Built environment – emphasizing safer and sustainable building materials by investigating many persistent and deeply structural concerns embedded in building materials production
- Food systems – focusing on increasing access and equity; understanding effects of plastic use in food production and microplastics emissions for soil health, consumable food and feed, and organic waste processing
- Product stewardship and solid waste management – understanding the scale of macro and microplastic releases into the environment from Oregon’s production and consumption
- Informing materials management policy by developing science-based impact assessments of materials in the Oregon economy
People and placesThe higher goal of enhancing wellbeing in the 2050 Vision for Materials Management is where all the efforts of environmental protection come together. It can be seen as centering people and place in program development, engagement and policy making. Organizing our work with people and places can help frame materials in service of human wellbeing. It can lead to better collaboration across programmatic priorities and build better communication on cross-cutting topics that affect multiple areas and regions in the state. Some examples include connections between the built environment, food systems, quality of air and water, soil health and food production, organic and solid waste management. In addition, centering people and places can lead to better outcomes for access, equity, justice and health.
Relevant research and resources