In-use product stocks link manufactured capital to natural capital

Abstract

In-use stock of a product is the amount of the product in active use. In-use product stocks provide various functions or services on which we rely in our daily work and lives, and the concept of inuse product stock for industrial ecologists is similar to the concept of net manufactured capital stock for economists. This study estimates historical physical in-use stocks of 91 products and 9 product groups and uses monetary data on net capital stocks of 56 products to either approximate or compare with in-use stocks of the corresponding products in the United States. Findings include the following: (i) The development of new products and the buildup of their in-use stocks result in the increase in variety of in-use product stocks and of manufactured capital; (ii) substitution among products providing similar or identical functions reflects the improvement in quality of in-use product stocks and of manufactured capital; and (iii) the historical evolution of stocks of the 156 products or product groups in absolute, per capita, or per-household terms shows that stocks of most products have reached or are approaching an upper limit. Because the buildup, renewal, renovation, maintenance, and operation of in-use product stocks drive the anthropogenic cycles of materials that are used to produce products and that originate from natural capital, the determination of in-use product stocks together with modeling of anthropogenic material cycles provides an analytic perspective on the material linkage between manufactured capital and natural capital.in-use stocks | manufactured capital | industrial ecology | sustainability

The Material Stock–Flow–Service Nexus: A New Approach for Tackling the Decoupling Conundrum

“…Much research on material stocks has focused on specific substances or materials at various scales. Metals have received most attention [31], from global reconstructions of specific in-use metals stocks and flows [28,85,105] to national level long-term studies on specific metal uses and accumulated stocks [105]. The study of stocks and flows of construction minerals has also increased in the last years [32].…”

“…They typically allow characterizing stocks in terms of the resource requirements involved in building, renewing and using them, as well as the related emissions [ Material stocks represent the physical infrastructure for production and consumption, and hence the material basis of societal wellbeing [103]. They play a central role in deriving services required for the functioning of society such as shelter, mobility and communication from material and energy flows [28,105]. Socioeconomic material and energy flows are required to create stocks such as buildings, infrastructures or machinery in the first place, to maintain or improve them to keep them in a usable state and to serve dissipative uses required to provide services from stocks [28,76,88,91,105].…”

“…They play a central role in deriving services required for the functioning of society such as shelter, mobility and communication from material and energy flows [28,105]. Socioeconomic material and energy flows are required to create stocks such as buildings, infrastructures or machinery in the first place, to maintain or improve them to keep them in a usable state and to serve dissipative uses required to provide services from stocks [28,76,88,91,105]. Material stocks influence flows, not only because resources are required for building, maintaining and removing them, but also due to the path dependencies for the future resource use patterns they create (e.g., transport infrastructures or heating and cooling requirements of buildings).…”

Industrial Ecology: The role of manufactured capital in sustainability

“…Unlike financial capital or materials use, however, information on product stocks over time is widely scattered and has been regarded as of uncertain integrity. By drawing on very diverse and extensive sources of information, Chen and Graedel (69) have examined the histories of more than 100 product stocks in the United States. The authors note instances of product saturation or substitution, and present a product-based argument for a "fifth Kondratieff wave" based on telecommunications and information technology (69).…”

Prosperity, Sustainability and the Measurement of Wealth

“…Quantities can often be objectively known, but it is often impossible to directly observe the social value of a particular good. Even with fantastic quantity data, as in Chen and Graedel (2015), there is no way to aggregate the various goods and services into a single measure that we can use to represent well-being without first estimating the social value for each good and service.…”