| Abstract |
Humans are extracting and consuming unprecedented quantities of materials from the crust of the Earth. Contributing to this consumption, university campuses require large amounts of materials to operate. This offers opportunities for the implementation of circular economy principles that optimise material use and demonstrate best practice to future generations of decision makers, globally. This paper uses the Parkville campus of the University of Melbourne as a single revelatory case study to quantify its material flow for 2017. We use extremely disaggregated procurement data of 11 555 purchases of materials, mapped against 189 different material archetypes to estimate material inflows. Material outflows are sourced directly from the waste management contractor of the University. We also quantify the embodied energy, water, and greenhouse gas emissions of all inflows, using environmentally extended input-output analysis. Results show that procurement-related inflows tend to represent a small share (-4%) of the total material flows (2 280 Gg), but result in significant environmental effects due to the nature of the materials (e.g. electronics, cabling, photovoltaic panels, furniture, etc.). The modelled procurement-related purchases result in 22 587 GJ of energy, 1 477 GgCO(2)e of greenhouse gas emissions and 30 891 kL of water, and 3.46 MAUD in cost, annually. Yet, the majority of material flows on campus tend to be generated by non-procurement-related drivers, notably food and food packaging waste resulting from retail on and off campus. Based on these findings, the paper recommends a series of actions that universities and large organisations can adopt to transition to a more circular economy. |
