Steven B. Young

Orbital sustainability rules are becoming more demanding, yet most instruments still evaluate mission conduct rather than the realised condition of an orbital regime. This article develops a policy architecture for translating a regime-level Space Footprint signal into auditable supervisory action. The framework combines count- and mass-weighted burden lenses with persistence, legacy-stock composition and evidence coverage. Four triggers are specified: material burden deterioration, mechanism diagnosis, loss of decision-stable superiority by mitigation-only policy, and a robustness alarm when evidence coverage or scenario ordering becomes unreliable. A residence-time gradient replaces the coarse assumption that all low Earth orbit is self-clearing and all higher orbit is equivalent; five prudential classes connect effective natural residence time to response families ranging from reporting and post-mission-disposal controls to owner-consent procedures, financial readiness and stock-affecting intervention. An illustrative application to a versioned Space Footprint scenario ensemble shows why trigger timing is regime-conditioned: remediation remains decision-stable through the evaluated horizon in several turnover-sensitive regimes, while sun-synchronous and geosynchronous cases lose stable superiority later unless stock subtraction is combined with durable inflow control. The paper then maps the architecture onto the proposed EU Space Act, COPUOS coordination and United States licensing practice. Because jurisdiction and control over registered objects persist under Article VIII of the Outer Space Treaty, escalation is framed as consent, financing and readiness activation—not unilateral removal. The contribution is a transparent bridge from system-state diagnosis to adaptive, legally realistic orbital governance.

Climate change and environmental sustainability are major priorities across scientific and policy domains. Scientists themselves are starting to recognize that their own activities have direct and indirect environmental impacts. These impacts result from things like material and energy use and waste generation in conducting scientific research, particularly in laboratories. In this article, we build upon growing efforts to measure and manage these environmental impacts by conducting cradle-to-grave life cycle assessments (LCAs) of widely used scientific and laboratory equipment. We considered over 3000 pieces of equipment used by Government of Canada laboratories. Our study contributes in four ways. First, although previous work has examined laboratory consumables and other impact drivers like building energy consumption and transportation, our study draws attention to the environmental impacts of laboratory and scientific equipment. Second, our study demonstrates a novel approach for screening large and varied sets of equipment to prioritize equipment with the highest potential environmental impacts. Third, our study broadens the scope of assessment with respect to system boundaries (i.e., cradle-to-grave) and environmental impacts (i.e., beyond GHG emissions). Finally, our study connects equipment-level LCA results to sustainability transformations by highlighting leverage points informed by the life cycle profile of equipment. Our results suggest a tendency for laboratory and scientific equipment to be use-intensive (as seen, e.g., in the case of refrigerators and freezers where the use stage accounts for approximately 97% of life cycle GHG emissions). However, this life cycle profile varies across environmental indicators (e.g., climate change, acidification, smog formation, and ecological toxicity) and with changes in equipment usage frequency (i.e., hours per year in operation). Some equipment, like scanning electron microscopes, can be production-intensive. These findings suggest that sustainability transformations for laboratory equipment need to consider the life cycle profile of the equipment and involve leverage points beyond procurement decisions.

Despite growing concerns, the environmental impacts of metals and minerals supply chains remain poorly understood. In this study, we comprehensively assess these impacts, using life cycle assessment, considering 163 production routes associated with 53 elements. First, we quantify their global carbon footprint, which amounts to about 8 Gt CO2-eq/year, representing 15% of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions in 2023. Iron and steel production, primarily in China, accounts for 77% of this carbon footprint, driven by large production volumes, while their impact intensity remains relatively limited, averaging 3.2 kg CO2-eq/kg. This contrasts with the carbon footprint intensity of precious elements (e.g., silver, iridium), ranging from 884 to 42,124 kg CO2-eq/kg on average. This impact intensity largely varies from one production route to another, influenced by various factors (e.g., geographical, technological) and drivers (e.g., electricity, chemicals). We also assess other impact categories (particulate matter, acidification, photochemical ozone), revealing trade-offs in environmental impacts.

Regulatory actors, particularly market authorization agencies, health technology assessment agencies, and health care procurement agencies, exert a powerful influence on the adoption and use of health technologies (eg, medicines and medical devices). With health care being responsible, directly and indirectly, for an estimated 4.6% of global greenhouse gas emissions, alongside other environmental harms, these actors have recognized the need to address the environmental impacts of health technologies. In this commentary, we utilize concepts of regulatory stringency and lifecycle thinking, considering scope, prescriptiveness, and performance requirements, to analyze recent efforts to incorporate environmental sustainability into the regulation of medicines and medical devices. While we acknowledge recent progress, we argue that there is significant, untapped potential for developing more fulsome and effective regulatory mechanisms to improve the environmental sustainability of health technologies.