Raw materials are unfinished materials or natural resources used to produce or manufacture finished products for sale. These materials can be used in their unprocessed or processed form as found suitable. Examples include cotton, crude oil, coal, rubber blanks, mineral ores, wood, etc.

Sustainable materials may be sourced from low environmental impact or renewable resources, be more durable with a longer lifecycle, have a smaller footprint to manufacture or use, or be easier to break down at end of life. Some can even be human-made materials, designed to help preserve natural resources.

The purpose of a circular economy is to maintain the value of products, materials and resources for as long as possible by returning them into the product cycle after they have reached the end of their lifecycle, while minimizing the generation of waste. Materials such as biomass, metals, minerals and fossil fuels are extracted from the environment to make products or to produce energy. When their life cycle ends, products may be recycled, incinerated, or discarded as residual waste. Those material flows are an essential part, albeit not the only one, of the circular economy. The fewer products we discard and the more we recycle, the fewer materials we extract, thus benefiting our environment.

Systems thinking is a holistic approach to analysis that focuses on the way that a system's constituent parts interrelate and how systems work over time and within the context of larger systems.

Technology commercialization is the process of transitioning technologies from the research lab to the marketplace. This activity is complimentary to the process of publishing research findings.