MAC (Material Cycle and Manufacturing Capital) is a collaborative research platform to measure and manage material base for sustainable development. As the core function, MaC platform is designed to monitor the anthropogenic material cycle and its Spatio-temporal distribution by collecting and synthesizing dispersed data of production, manufacturing, consumption, trade, and recycling of various materials. Under such a basis, MaC aims to expand the applicability and serviceability of material cycle to address the pressing technical, economic, and environmental challenges.
MAC welcomes and acknowledges all stakeholders contributing to the accounting of material flows, and all datasets are free to download for research purposes upon request. At present, under the support of UNEP-NSFC, CAS, and other industrial projects, MaC starts with the global accounting of 55 metals which are empowered by the following six key components:
- MeT-CYCLE to provide detailed datasets of national and global metal flows and stocks along its life cycle;
- MeT-MEG to provide the life cycle inventory of regional-specific metal mining and metallurgy processes;
- MeT-ECON to provide high-resolution datasets of metal flows and stocks within economic sectors;
- MeT-GEO to provide the geographic distribution datasets of metal stocks and production facilities;
- MeT-TRADE to provide all metal-contained trade flows linking all nations in the world;
- MeT-NEXUS to provide the metal-specific integrated assessment model to link metal cycle with energy, economic, and climate modelling.
Recent MAC Publications
