Yuichi Moriguchi’s research is concerned with material flow analysis. He is a Professor at the Department of Urban Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, University of Tokyo.
He was the Director of the Research Center for Material Cycles and Waste Management inside the National Institute for Environmental Studies in Japan. He has also contributed to material flow analysis work at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Dr Moriguchi is currently examining how to combine flow analysis with input-output analysis and life-cycle assessments, to establish a systems analysis for recycling.
Dr Moriguchi teaches a course on a cycle-oriented society at the Graduate School of Frontier Sciences in the University of Tokyo. He is also part of a consultative group at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, working on sustainable development indicators. Dr Moriguchi is a member of the IRP’s Working Group on the Environmental Impacts of Products and Materials. He contributed to the development of the 2009 report Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production: Priority Products and Materials.
Dr Moriguchi is a member of a technical advisory group for Japan’s Environment Ministry on sound material cycles in society, GHG emissions inventory, GHG reduction policy, life-cycle assessment and environmental indicators, and an editorial committee member for the Japan Society of Material Cycles and Waste Management. He earned a PhD in Sanitary and Environmental Engineering from Kyoto University in Japan.
Contributed to the following reports
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Metal Stocks in Society
A key question that relates to the very broad and intensive use of metals is whether society needs to be concerned about long-term supplies of any or many of them. To examine this question, this reports reviews 54 studies on the topic.
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Assessing the Environmental Impacts of Consumption and Production
This report gives a scientific assessment of which global environmental problems present the biggest challenges, and weighs up the impacts of various economic activities to identify priorities for change.
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Decoupling Natural Resource Use and Environmental Impacts from Economic Growth
We are using unsustainable amounts of the Earth’s natural resources. We need to improve the rate of resource productivity (“doing more with less”) faster than the economic growth rate. This is the notion behind “decoupling”.