The evolution of the EU electronics market and its impact on direct material consumption: Lessons from the past

Abstract

The direct material consumption of technological systems is connected to three challenges: the overall metabolism of the technological system; the growing material complexity of technologies; their reliance on critical or geologically scarce materials. These challenges are often examined in isolation, overlooking their interrelated nature. We propose a systematic, multi-level perspective, leveraging concepts from Ecology and Industrial Ecology, namely scale and product ecosystem. Indeed, when investigating empirically the material consumption of technologies, i.e. electronic products, it is essential to acknowledge their co-evolution and to explicitly define the boundaries of the scrutinized system. We exploit a dataset detailed in technology and material identification, to develop a longitudinal, bottom-up analysis disentangling the direct material consumption patterns at the market, functional group, and material levels over three decades in Europe. Results indicate that strategies improving the material consumption dynamics at one level of the system may have adverse effects at others. Reductions in materials consumption stem primarily from changes in the composition of the technological system rather than functional dematerialization. Notably, technological convergence, the shift from single-function to multi-functional devices, emerges as a significant contributor to reduced materials usage. However, the increasing functionality of technologies is at the same time the main risk of directing the electronic market towards a dependence from some specific critical and geologically scarce materials.