Abstract
The global economy is using growing amounts of natural resources such as raw materials, water, and land by making and using goods, services, and infrastructure. Aspirations on international, regional, and national levels e.g., the Sustainable Development Goals, the EU flagship initiative Roadmap to a Resource Efficient Europe or the German Program for Resource Efficiency are showing an urgent need to bring the global raw material use down to sustainable levels. An essential prerequisite to identify resource efficient options and to implement resource efficiency measures and solutions is the ability to compare different products or services regarding their raw material use. Until today, there is no internationally standardized approach defined and no software supported calculation method including the necessary data basis available to measure the raw material intensity of products. A new life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method Product Material Footprint PMF is described. Two indicators are used to quantify the PMF: the Raw Material Input RMI and the Total Material Requirement TMR. The calculation of global median values for the characterization factors CFRMI and CFTMR of abiotic materials was done based on different databases. This article presents the methodological approach of the PMF, the calculation results for CFRMI of 42 abiotic materials and CFTMR of 36 abiotic materials, and the implementation of the LCIA method into the software openLCA for use with the ecoinvent database.
Highlights
With the adoption of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the MemberStates have agreed on 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to promote activities of major importance for the planet [1]
This article presents the methodological approach of the Product Material Footprint (PMF), the calculation results for CFRMI of 42 abiotic materials and CFTMR of 36 abiotic materials, and the implementation of the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method into the software openLCA
The RMI is the raw material input measured in kg raw material per Functional Unit (FU), mmaterial i is the mass of material i measured in kg per FU, n is the total number of different materials required for the provision of the FU, and the CFRMI material i is the Characterization Factor Raw Material Input of material i measured in kg raw material per kg material
Summary
With the adoption of the United Nations 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Member. With the adoption of the German Resource Efficiency Program ProgRess, it was decided to report on progress in the development of resource efficiency every four years [13] Against this background, ProgRess II was published for which, in addition to abiotic material productivity, total raw material productivity is mentioned for the first time as an indicator [14]. The growing need to increase resource productivity of economies requires us to measure the life cycle wide use of natural material resources both at the country as well as at the product level. Raw Material Input CFRMI and Characterization Factors Total Material Requirement CFTMR to the mass flows of the materials that are required as a life cycle wide input for the product or service. As a new LCIA method and used for the software-supported calculation of the material intensity of products and services
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