Materials Flow Accounting in Sweden Material Use for National Consumption and for Export

This article presents Swedish economy‐wide material flow accounts for the period 1987‐1998. It also shows possibilities for enhancing the international comparability of aggregated data on material use, by distinguishing between materials used for consumption and export purposes. The direct material input (DMI) is used as an aggregate measure to estimate the amounts of natural resources (except water and air) that are taken from nature into the economy within a year, including imports to and production within the region in question. The division of materials used for consumption and export purposes avoids double counting trade flows when DMI is applied to a group of countries. The annual DMI in Sweden for 1997‐1998, including production and imports, amounts to 24 to 27 metric tons per capita (t/c). The fossil fuel input varies only slightly over the period, from 3.2 t/c in 1991 to 3.6 t/c in 1996, a level deemed unsustainable by the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency. The input of renewable raw materials varies between 8 and 9 t/c. Ores and minerals vary between 11 and 15 t/c. The DMI puts Sweden above estimates made for Germany, the United States, and Japan and in the same range as the Netherlands. The differences in these values can mainly be explained by the relative importance of exports as compared to the size of the economy and by the variation in system boundaries for the data on natural resources. The system boundaries and data sources for natural resources need to be further defined to make the measures fully comparable. Around 5 t/c is exported, whereas the rest, around 20 t/c, is national consumption. The aggregate direct material consumption (DMC), which is the DMI minus exports, communicates the magnitude of resource use. Comparisons of the input with solid waste statistics indicate that quantity of waste (excluding mining waste) in Sweden is equal to about 10% relative of the total resource use. Material collected for recycling by the waste management system is equal to about 5% of the amount of virgin resources brought into society each year.     

Applying Ecological Input-Output Flow Analysis to Material Flows in Industrial Systems

This article, continuing with the themes of the companion article, expounds the capabilities of input-output techniques as applied to material flows in industrial systems. Material flows are the primary focus because of their role in directly linking natural and industrial systems and thereby being fundamental components of environmental issues in industrial economies. The specific topic in this article concerns several material flow metrics used to characterize system behavior that are derived from the ecological development of input-output techniques; most notable of these metrics are several measures of material cycling and a measure of the number of processes visited by material while in a system. These metrics are shown to be useful in analyzing the state of material flow systems. Further-more, the metrics are shown to be a central link in connecting input-output flow analysis to synthesis (i.e., the process of using measurements of system behavior to design changes to that system). By connecting the flow metrics to both environmental objectives and controllable aspects of flow models, changes to existing flow systems are synthesized to generate improved system behavior. To bring this pair of articles to a close, several limitations of input-output flow analysis are summarized with the goal of stimulating further interest and research.     

Rationale for and Interpretation of Economy-Wide Materials Flow Analysis and Derived Indicators

Economy-wide material flow analysis (MFA) and derived indicators have been developed to monitor and assess the metabolic performance of economies, that is, with respect to the internal economic flows and the exchange of materials with the environment and with other economies. Indicators such as direct material input (DMI) and direct material consumption (DMC) measure material use related to either production or consumption. Domestic hidden flows (HF) account for unused domestic extraction, and foreign HF represent the upstream primary resource requirements of the imports. DMI and domestic and foreign HF account for the total material requirement (TMR) of an economy. Subtracting the exports and their HF provides the total material consumption (TMC).
DMI and TMR are used to measure the (de-) coupling of resource use and economic growth, providing the basis for resource efficiency indicators. Accounting for TMR allows detection of shifts from domestic to foreign resource requirements. Net addition to stock (NAS) measures the physical growth of an economy. It indicates the distance from flow equilibrium of inputs and outputs that may be regarded as a necessary condition of a sustainable mature metabolism.
We discuss the extent to which MFA-based indicators can also be used to assess the environmental performance. For that purpose we consider different impacts of material flows, and different scales and perspectives of the analysis, and distinguish between turnover-based indicators of generic environmental pressure and impact-based indicators of specific environmental pressure. Indicators such as TMR and TMC are regarded as generic pressure indicators that may not be used to indicate specific environmental impacts. The TMR of industrial countries is discussed with respect to the question of whether volume and composition may be regarded as unsustainable.     

Regional Patterns in Global Resource Extraction

This article presents an account of global resource extraction for the year 1999 by material groups, world regions, and development status. The account is based on materials flow analysis methodology and provides benchmark information for political strategies toward sustainable resource management. It shows that currently around 50 thousand megatons of resources are extracted yearly on a global scale, which results in a yearly global average resource use of around 8 tonnes per capita. Assuming further growth in world regions not yet close to the levels of resource use in the industrial cores—such as India or China—numbers could easily double once these parts of the world come to fully incorporate the industrial mode of production and consumption. This article contributes to information on resource use indicators, complementing and enriching information from economic accounting in order to facilitate political measures toward a sustainable use of resources.     

The System of Environmental and Economic Accounts—2003 and the Economic Relevance of Physical Flow Accounting

The international handbook on integrated environmental and economic accounting (SEEA-2003) provides a detailed overview of environmental accounting approaches that have been developed in parallel with the system of national (economic) accounts. In addition to natural resource stock accounts and environmental protection expenditure accounts, SEEA-2003 pays considerable attention to physical flow accounting. Expanding the national economic accounts with physical data sets facilitates the joint analysis of environmental and economic policy issues. This article discusses the main characteristics of national accounts-oriented physical flow accounting approaches and provides an overview of the kind of indicators they may put forward. Although this article is not an attempt to provide a comprehensive review of macrooriented physical flow accounting approaches, the analytical advantages of national accounts-oriented physical flow accounts are illustrated.     

Applying Ecological Input-Output Flow Analysis to Material Flows in Industrial Systems: Part I: Tracing Flows

Input-output mathematics, which allows a modeler to fully consider direct and indirect relationships among conserved flows in a system, has a long history in economics with prominent use dating to Leontief in the 1930s. Nearly all previous industrial applications of input-output analysis have been grounded in the monetary flows of an economy. Here however, because of the central nature of physical flows in the environmental impact of industry, we consider physical flows to be a fundamental component of an industrial economy. Hence, we propose an input-output based approach for modeling physical flows in industry independent of their monetary implications.
In this first part of a two-part article, a framework for using input-output mathematics to model material and energy flows is constructed from a foundation laid by previous research in nutrient and energy cycling in natural ecosystems. The mathematics of input-output flow analysis is presented from an ecological perspective, culminating in two core capabilities: tracing of flows with environs (investigated in this article) and characterizing system behavior with flow metrics (presented in the second article). We assert that environ analysis is an effective means for tracing flows through industrial systems while fully considering direct and indirect flow paths. We explore material flows of aluminum and five other metals in depth using environ analysis in this article.     

Materials Flow Analysis of the Italian Economy

This article analyzes the mass of the materials that flowed through the Italian economy during 1994 and compares the results with a similar analysis of Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States published by a collaboration headed by the World Resources Institute. In order to perform this comparison, we have evaluated the mass of the materials produced within the country and the mass of the imported materials and commodities. For the domestic production, imports and exports, we have also evaluated the mass of the materials that accompany—as "hidden flows"—each physical flow.
Our analysis indicates that, in 1994, Italy experienced total material requirements (TMR) of 1,609 million metric tons (Mt), of which 727 Mt was used as direct material input (DMI). A comparison with other developed countries shows that the TMR and DMI flows, measured in mass per person and in mass per GDP unit, are, in Italy, lower than the corresponding figures evaluated for the United States, Germany, and the Netherlands. An interpretation of these results is presented. The analysis may give information useful for environmental considerations, although the limits of such an approach are made clear.     

Materials Flows in Finland: Resource Use in a Small Open Economy

In this article, the development of natural resource use in Finland during the period 1970-1997 is analyzed. In measuring natural resource use, the concept of total material requirement (TMR) is applied. The focus is on the linkages of resource use with the changing structures of the economy. The linkages are studied using input-output analysis.
Using input-output analysis, the TMR is further partitioned into resources used for domestic final use or for total material consumption (TMC) and total material requirement of exports (TME). The analysis shows that TMR has the problem of double accounting: if the TMRs of all countries of the world are summed, then international trade would be accounted for twice in the world TMR, once in imports and once in exports of each country.
The TMC concept does not have this kind of defect. In a small, open economy like that of Finland, where the share of foreign trade is large, the difference between the TMR and the TMC is also large. We show that by 1997, the TME comprised about half of Finland's TMR and that the growth of the TMR over the study period has been due to the TME only as the TMC has stayed rather constant.     

Methodology and Indicators of Economy‐wide Material Flow Accounting

This contribution presents the state of the art of economy‐wide material flow accounting. Starting from a brief recollection of the intellectual and policy history of this approach, we outline system definition, key methodological assumptions, and derived indicators. The next section makes an effort to establish data reliability and uncertainty for a number of existing multinational (European and global) material flow accounting (MFA) data compilations and discusses sources of inconsistencies and variations for some indicators and trends. The results show that the methodology has reached a certain maturity: Coefficients of variation between databases lie in the range of 10% to 20%, and correlations between databases across countries amount to an average R² of 0.95. After discussing some of the research frontiers for further methodological development, we conclude that the material flow accounting framework and the data generated have reached a maturity that warrants material flow indicators to complement traditional economic and demographic information in providing a sound basis for discussing national and international policies for sustainable resource use.     

Uncertainties of Domestic Road Freight Statistics: Insights for Regional Material Flow Studies

Freight statistics are at the core of many studies in the field of industrial ecology because they depict the physical interdependencies of territories and allow links to be made worldwide between production and consumption. Recent studies have focused increasingly on subnational scales, often relying on domestic freight data. In this perspective, this article analyses the uncertainties of the French domestic road freight survey, road being by far the most common mode of transport in the country. Based on a statistical analysis of the survey, we propose a model to estimate the uncertainty of any given domestic road transport flow. We also assess uncertainty reduction when averaging the flows over several years, and obtain for instance a 30% reduction for a three‐year average. We then study the impact of the uncertainties on regional material flow studies such as the economy‐wide material flow analysis of the Bourgogne region. Overall the case studies advocate for a systematic assessment of freight uncertainties, as neither the disaggregation level nor the quantities traded are good enough predictors. This justifies the need for an easy‐to‐implement estimation model. Finally, basic comparison with the German and Swedish surveys tends to indicate that the main conclusions presented in this article are likely to be valid in other European countries.     

Decomposition Analysis of Finnish Material Flows: 1960–1996

To the extent that environmental impacts are the consequence of the magnitude of total material input into production in an economy, they can be lessened by reducing the use of materials—by concentrating on what has been called qualitative growth. This article presents a summary of Finnish resource use over the period 1960–1996 as a means of evaluating the trends in material use and providing a basis for assessments of sustainability. It adapts the technique of decomposition analysis developed in the field of energy studies to distinguish the effects of changes in aggregate economic activity ("activity effect"), composition of industrial activity ("structural effect") and materials intensity of use ("intensity effect") on a sectoral basis.p
According to the analysis presented here, materials consumption in Finland has grown substantially between 1960 and 1996 in the electricity, gas and water supply, pulp and paper production, civil engineering, and mining and quarrying sectors. In the same period, the ratio of GDP/mass of material mobilized has improved by 175 percent. Economic growth has caused the largest increases in materials use in the building of infrastructures; for example roads, waterways, means of supplying electricity, gas, and water, and in the production of paper and paper products. The least growth took place in the transport, basic metals production, and mining and quarrying sectors.     

Consumption‐based Material Flow Accounting

In 2007, imports accounted for approximately 34% of the material input (domestic extraction and imports) into the Austrian economy and almost 60% of the GDP stemmed from exports. Upstream material inputs into the production of traded goods, however, are not yet included in the standard framework of material flow accounting (MFA). We have reviewed different approaches accounting for these upstream material inputs, or raw material equivalents (RME), positioning them in a wider debate about consumption‐based perspectives in environmental accounting. For the period 1995–2007, we calculated annual RME of Austria's trade and consumption applying a hybrid approach. For exports and competitive imports, we used an environmentally extended input‐output model of the Austrian economy, based on annual supply and use tables and MFA data. For noncompetitive imports, coefficients for upstream material inputs were extracted from life cycle inventories. The RME of Austria's imports and exports were approximately three times larger than the trade flows themselves. In 2007, Austria's raw material consumption was 30 million tonnes or 15% higher than its domestic material consumption. We discuss the material composition of these flows and their temporal dynamics. Our results demonstrate the need for a consumption‐based perspective in MFA to provide robust indicators for dematerialization and resource efficiency analysis of open economies.     

Modeling Basic Industries in the Australian Stocks and Flows Framework

The Australian stocks and flows framework (ASFF) is a tool for establishing a coherent historical picture of the Australian physical economy and for testing long-term future scenarios (up to 2050 or even 2100). These scenarios can be used to investigate the long-term physical consequences of current and future choices affecting the physical dimensions of sustainability. In this article we describe the methodology for and construction of a key component of ASFF: a dynamic physical input-output model of material flows in the basic industries.
The materials model in ASFF describes physical flows and their transformation by industrial processes. The model's structure permits scenario analysis of long-term technological change by permitting time-varying input-output coefficients and vintage models of capital stocks. As a consequence, the model contains a large number of parameters, which can be left at default settings or adjusted as the modeler sees fit, in order to simulate the widest possible range of physically realizable scenarios. The materials model is built using a methodology that integrates bottom-up process analysis with top-down statistics on material and energy flows. We present some examples showing how the materials model has been implemented to model Australian heavy industries. Several possibilities for further developing the materials model are also described.     

Quantitative Evaluation of Data Quality in Regional Material Flow Analysis

A method for quantitative evaluation of data quality in regional material flow analysis (MFA) is presented. The principal idea is that data quality is a multidimensional problem that cannot be judged by individual characteristics such as the data source, given that data from official statistics may not be per se of good quality and expert estimations may not be per se of bad quality, respectively. It appears that MFA data are never totally accurate and may have certain defects that impair the quality of the data in more than one dimension. The concept of MFA information defects is introduced, and these information defects are mathematically formalized as functions of data characteristics. They are quantified on a scale from 0 (no information defect) to 1 (maximum information defect). The proposed method is illustrated in a case study on palladium flows in Austria. A quantitative evaluation of data quality provides opportunities for understanding and assessing MFA results, their a priori information basis, their reliability in decision making, and data uncertainties. It is a formal step toward better reproducibility and more transparency in MFA.     

Materials and Energy Flow Analysis of Paper Consumption in the United Kingdom, 1987-2010

This article presents the results of a life-cycle materials and energy flow analysis for the pulp and paper cycle in the United Kingdom. Material flows are reconstructed for the period be-tween 1987 and 1996 for all major processes associated with the paper cycle, and system energy requirements are calculated over this period using the best available data. Attention is drawn to the import dependence of U.K. paper demand, and the significant energy requirements associated with upstream forestry processes. The historical trend analysis is then used to model possible future developments in materials and energy consumption until 2010 under a variety of assumptions about process technology improvements, wastepaper utilization rates, and changing demand trends. The results indicate that policy options to increase recycling yield some energy benefits, but these are small by comparison with the benefits to be gained by reducing consumption of paper and improving process technology. The structure of the electricity supply industry in the United Kingdom means that global energy benefits could also be achieved by increasing the contribution from imported pulp.     

Trade, Materials Flows, and Economic Development in the South: The Example of Chile

Materials flow analysis (MFA) is internationally recognized as a key tool to assess the biophysical metabolism of societies and to provide aggregated indicators for environmental pressures of human activities. Economy-wide MFAs have been compiled for a number of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, but so far very few studies exist for countries in the South. In this article, the first materials-flow-based indicators for Chile are presented. The article analyzes the restructuring of the Chilean economy toward an active integration in the world markets from the perspective of natural resource use in a time series from 1973 to 2000. Special emphasis is placed on the assessment of materials flows related to Chile's international trade relations. Results show that material inputs to the Chilean economy increased by a factor of 6, mainly as a result of the promotion of resource-intensive exports from the mining, fruit growing, forestry, and fishery sectors. At more than 40 tons, Chile's resource use per capita at present is one of the highest in the world. The article addresses the main shortcomings of the MFA approach, such as weightbased aggregation and the missing links between environmental pressures and impacts, and gives suggestions for methodological improvements and possible extensions of the MFA framework, with the intent of developing MFA into a more powerful tool for policy use.     

Applying Material Flow Accounting: Ecoauditing and Resource Management at the Kambium Furniture Workshop

The European Commission has established the Eco Management and Auditing Scheme (EMAS) to promote and institutionalize corporate environmental management and environmental audits. This article summarizes a study primarily concerned with the execution of an ecoaudit in a medium-sized furniture enterprise according to the rules of EMAS. Material flow accounting was used to assess and analyze the "gate-to-gate" and "cradle-to-grave" environmental impacts related to the firm's products and activities. A resource management strategy was developed that permits the determination of methods for firm-specific material flow management, product management, and ecological product design to improve environmental performance as seen from the vantage point of resource efficiency     

Full Mode and Attribution Mode in Environmental Analysis

Several tools exist for the analysis of the environmental impacts of chains or networks of processes. These relatively simple tools include materials flow accounting (MFA), substance flow analysis (SFA), life-cycle assessment (LCA), energy analysis, and environmentally extended input-output analysis (IOA), all based on fixed input-output relations. They are characterized by the nature of their flow objects, such as products, materials, energy, substances, or money flows, and by their spatial and temporal characteristics. These characteristics are insufficient for their methodological characterization, and sometimes lead to inappropriate use. More clarity is desirable, both for clearer guidance of applications and for a more consistent methodology development. In addition to the nature of the flow object and to spatial and temporal characteristics, another key feature concerns the way in which processes are included in a system to be analyzed.
The inclusion of processes can be done in two fundamentally different ways: according to a full mode of analysis, with the inclusion of all flows and related processes to their full extent as present in a region in a specific period of time; and according to an attribution mode, taking processes into account insofar as these are required for a given social demand, function, or activity, in principle whenever and wherever these processes take place. This distinction, which cuts across families of tools that traditionally belong together, appears to have significant methodological and practical implications. Thus the distinction between the two modes of analysis, however crucial it may be, strengthens the idea of one coherent family of tools for environmental systems analysis.     

Accounting for Fluorine: Production,Use, and Loss

Fluorine is an essential element to human health and to the chemical industry. In spite of our dependence on fluorine and fluorine compounds, we have yet to learn to use them wisely. Our fluorine history, which spans about a hundred years, has had negative effects such as hydrofluoric acid pollution caused by aluminum smelters and ozone depletion due to chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) emissions. More recent concerns center on greenhouse effects from CFCs, hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6). In this article we note also that fluorine is a nonrenewable resource that is nonsubstitutable for many purposes. This article tracks fluorine from sources through conversion processes to end uses, most of which are dissipative. We present a stock‐flow model of the fluorine system. Based on this model we consider some possible measures that could be taken to increase the degree of recovery. To mention one example, a large percentage of the world demand for fluorspar could be supplied by the phosphate rock (fertilizer) industry, which currently dissipates a great deal of recoverable fluorine in waste phospho‐gypsum.