This compendium "Resource Productivity in 7 Steps" is intended to give practical advice to designers, engineers, distributors, banks, lawmakers and others how to increase the resource productivity of goods and services (dematerialisation).
The eco-innovative (re-)design of products begins with the definition/description of the benefit or service, which a product provides to its user. The use of MIPS (Material Input Per unit Service) helps to develop solutions that can provide this benefit with the least possible quantity of natural resources, from. It measures the material and energy input of a product throughout its life-cycle, "from cradle to cradle" (production of raw materials, manufacturing, transportation, use, disposal). Thus, material and energy consumption can be minimised while satisfying the demand and decoupling of the economic activities from resource use.
The brochure describes in seven steps how to gain more resource productivity. It provides several worksheets for the innovation process and material intensity factors for the calculation of the material footprint. A translation into traditional chinese is also available.
Technical innovations can contribute significantly to increase resource efficiency. A selection of 21 examples for resource efficient technologies, products and strategies from the field shows the brochure Resource Efficiency Atlas, which was created in line with the same titled project. Overall the project team analysed several hundred technical solutions and strategies and assessed its possible contributions to increases in resource efficiency. The project was arranged co-operatively by the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Engineering IAO, the Trifolium-Beratungsgesellschaft mbH and the Institut für Arbeitswissenschaften und Technologiemanagement of the University Stuttgart. The examples from the brochure and further 70 examples can be seen on the project website www.ressourceneffizenzatlas.de.
Good practices : ESSAY
(2008)
This manual sets out to be an instruction guide for the implementation of analyses according to the MIPS concept. MIPS stands for Material Input Per Service unit, a measure developed at the Wuppertal Institute, which serves as an indicator of precautionary environmental protection. However, this publication is not a comprehensive description of the methods used, but should rather be seen as supplementing existing publications, in particular, the MAIA Handbook. This practical guide contains additional information, which cannot be part of a methodological description, but which is indispensable for the practical work. This manual is directed at enterprises and persons, who wish to carry out MIPS or a material analysis in relation to products or services. It gives a general impression of what MIPS is, and how MIPS is calculated.