A strategic goal of healthy social development is an increasing use of resources. The key to a cleaner future is the sustainable use of these resources, which ultimately requires non-destructive resource lifecycles. Materials and Energy are the intertwined resources that enable life on Earth. Energy requires materials and vice versa, hence the central role of materials and the future need to make our use of them as sustainable as possible. Although complete sustainability of the materials we need and use is impossible (entropy!), the nearly “inexhaustible” combination of solar and geothermal energy sources can provide a sufficiently high level of sustainability, say < ~0.5% / year critical material “loss”, for the foreseeable and imaginable future. Achieving such a level will facilitate evolving towards as circular an economy as possible, but also requires major research in materials design and recycling, as well as up-front design and development of materials, technologies and devices. This circular thinking can be extended to a number of industrial sectors requiring Materials and Energy, e.g. electronics, which generates impressive amounts of waste (e-waste). Apart from increasing the fraction of energy materials that can be recycled for re-use and minimizing peripheral waste all-through the manufacturing processes, we need to extend useful lifetimes, in terms of their function, of these materials and the products made with them. In general, we want our energy materials and infrastructure to become more resilient, because they are sturdier, easier to repair, or can (self-) heal.