General objective

The Metals Programme refers to a research programme that ran from 1993-2000. The research programme has finished and its resulting publications are listed on this site. 
The Metals Programme fitted within the concept of "Industrial Metabolism". It has focused on economic and environmental accumulation of metals in economy and environment of the Netherlands and the EU, and on the associated risks. 

General objective of the Metals Programme was to get a picture of this potential accumulation, the associated risks, the mechanisms behind it, the possibilities for a sustainable management of metal flows and accumulations and the consequences for society and environment. Four metals have been studied: cadmium, zinc, lead and copper.

Projects

Five projects have run under this research programme: 

1. Development of a general materials balance model at the Institute for Environmental Studies of the Free University of Amsterdam.
2. Economic modeling of Materials-Product Chains for chain management at the Faculty of Economics and Econometrics of the Free University of Amsterdam.
3. Possibilities for linking economic and substance flow models at the Centre of Environmental Science Leiden University and at the Faculty of Economics and Econometrics of the Free University of Amsterdam.
4. Flows and accumulations of non-ferro metals in the building sector at the Interfaculty Department of Environmental Science of the University of Amsterdam.
5. Sustainable metals management in the Netherlands and the European Community: metal fluxes and accumulation in agriculture at the Department of Soil Science and Plant Nutrition and the Center for Environmental Studies of the Agricultural University of Wageningen. 
    

The Metals Programme was coordinated by the Centre of Environmental Science of Leiden University. As part of this task indicators for sustainability and environmental quality have been developed and applied.

The commissioner

In 1993 the  Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) launched a priority research programme on Sustainability and Environmental Quality. This programme dealt with the entire chain of environmental impact from the perspectives of natural and social sciences. The programme revolved around the concepts of sustainability and environmental quality. The main thrust of the research was the operationalisation of these concepts, their methodological elaboration (specifically by way of systems analysis and modelling), and development of research tools. 

Within the Priority Programme three research programmes have run, of which the Metals Programme was one.

Publications

Download  full publication list (120 kB) here as Acrobat/PDF file.