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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.
The article estimates the natural resource consumption due to nutrition from the supply and demand sides. Using the MIPS (Material Input per Service Unit) methodology, we analyzed the use of natural resources along the supply chains of three Italian foodstuffs: wheat, rice and orange-based products. These figures were then applied for evaluating the sustainability of diets in 13 European countries. The results outline which phases in food production are more natural resource demanding than others. We also observed different levels of sustainability in the European diets and the effect of different foodstuffs in the materials, water and air consumption.