Resources | |
An Environmentally Ineffective Way to Increase Resource Productivity: Evidence from the Italian Case on Transferring the Burden Abroad | |
Renato Marra Campanale1  | |
[1] Institute for Environmental Protection and Research, Via V. Brancati 48, Rome 00144, Italy | |
关键词: resource productivity; raw material equivalents; vertically integrated products; | |
DOI : 10.3390/resources2040608 | |
来源: mdpi | |
【 摘 要 】
Policy has so far not taken full advantage of the tools offered by the “material flows” school of thought. Resource Productivity (RP) is amongst the normative concepts currently popular among policy makers the nearest one to Material Input Per Service unit (MIPS). However, the RP concept falls substantially short of the MIPS idea, as it puts resource use in relation to the monetary value of production, while MIPS makes reference to services actually delivered by the products. Moreover, the indicator currently used by the European Commission for monitoring RP lacks in life-cycle perspective, which is essential in the MIPS concept. The present paper illustrates, by using Italian case evidence, some of the current RP indicator shortcomings and it discusses a possible alternative, by introducing the life-cycle perspective. In Italy, RP has grown faster than both energy and labour productivity since 1980. This apparently shows that Italy is moving in the right direction. However, a deeper and more extensive analysis regarding the country’s natural resource requirements is necessary before a conclusion can be drawn about the sustainability of the Italian socio-economic process. Therefore, on the one hand we disaggregate material consumption (
【 授权许可】
CC BY
© 2013 by the authors; licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
【 预 览 】
Files | Size | Format | View |
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RO202003190030913ZK.pdf | 285KB | download |