The Dawn of Materials Design and Processing for a Sustainable World

The world is facing an unprecedented crisis that is centered on materials resources, design, processing, and consumption, as well as disposal and recycling. Recent estimates reveal that every year, the economies of the 30 nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) consume more than twenty billion mt of material resources: about 50 kg per person per day(1). Although these estimates reflect significant uncertainty, they clearly point to this pressing global challenge: How must we as leaders in materials technology development and implementation deal with the unavoidable effects of projected increases far beyond these current levels of production, consumption, and disposal? In an example that is relevant to the primary markets for powder metallurgy (PM) parts, China has recently passed the U.S. as the world's largest market for automobiles. Thus, it is becoming painfully obvious that the sleeping giants of global population, China and India, are more than anxious to join the more prosperous world in this rising tide of consumerism. This contribution is based on an invited presentation at PowderMet2010; it focuses on the challenges to, and the proactive response of the major materials-oriented technical and professional societies in relation to sustainability.