Renewable material resource potential

Renewable material resource potential

Van Weenen, H.

2010-10-26

Renewable material resources, consist of complex systems and parts. Their sub-systems and sub-sub-systems, have unique, specific, general and common properties. The character of the use that is made of these resources, depends on the availability of knowledge, experience, methods, tools, machines and infrastructure. First and above all, however, the starting point is to identify the prevailing concepts about resource use. Various terms can be mentioned, such as ‘full use of resource potential’, ‘total resource recovery’, ‘whole crop use’, ‘integrated usage’, and ‘cascading’ of resources. Once a part of a renewable resource has been extracted, the highest level of its resource potential should be maintained for as long as possible, and as much of it as feasible should serve the next and many other future processes, applications and products. A hierarchy of resource potential would be: natural functioning – use of functioning – use of total characteristics – use of shape and structure, the physical components – chemical properties – energetic properties – elementary properties. The various complexes of combined use potentials of a plant and of its parts, should be matched with the hierarchy of elementary needs that people wish to express. Thus, several levels of potential value creation can be distinguished. The paper argues that multi-purpose and multi-uses plants, trees and shrubs can be come an economic source of local and regional creation of sustainable value, well into the future.

renewable resources
potential
sustainable development

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Conference proceedings

conference paper

(c) 2010 Van Weenen, H.