Material flow accounting in an Irish city-region 1992–2002

Abstract

This paper aims to measure raw material inputs and waste flows in an Irish city-region in order to analyse (i) whether there was absolute dematerialisation in the particular case-study over the period 1992-2002 and (ii) whether material consumption and waste generation were decoupled from economic growth and increases in disposable income over the same period. It was found that the selected material flow indicators showed no evidence of absolute dematerialisation over the given study period, although more recent evidence at the national level suggests that a decline in construction activity and extraction of non-metallic minerals has resulted in an absolute reduction in material consumption and it is likely that this will be mirrored at the system boundary level. It was found that Domestic Material Consumption (DMC) per capita and Direct MaterialInput (DMI) per capita increased at a faster rate than Domestic Processed Output (DPO) per capita and Direct Material Output (DMO) per capita between 1992 and 2002, which indicates relative decoupling of consumption from waste generation. In addition, it was found that there was relative decoupling of consumption and waste generation from disposable income growth over the study period. Finally, it was found that average DMC and DMI figures for the selected case-study were lower than the national averages but broadly similar to results for other city-regions in the European Union (EU). On a methodological note, it was concluded that material flow accounting (MFA) for city-regions in Ireland is constrained due to a lack of disaggregated data for material flows, with the exception of local waste data, and it is recommended that bottom-up analysis should be used to complement disaggregated top-down data.

Assessing environmental risks for high intensity agriculture using the material flow analysis method —a case study of the Dongting Lake basin in South Central China

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Sustainability Indicators Integrating Consumption Patterns in Strategic Environmental Assessment for Urban Planning

“…More detailed methodologies (such as material flow analysis [26] or lifecycle assessment, [27]) could be useful, as well, but in some cases, may undermine the proportionality approach of impact assessment. In other words, the computational effort for applying those at the local scale could be too high and the details provided by the PPPs not enough for a robust evaluation.…”

Emergy-based assessment on the brownfield redevelopment of one old industrial area: a case of Tiexi in China

“…Academically, several methods have been employed to assess regional sustainability, such as ecological footprint analysis (EFA) (Wackernagel et al, 1999;Geng et al, 2014c), material flow accounting (MFA) (Browne et al, 2011), emergy synthesis (Liu et al, 2014;Geng et al, 2010Geng et al, , 2014b and exergy accounting (Sciubba et al, 2008). Each method has its own advantages and disadvantages.…”