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U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Papers U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

2009

Using Material Flow Analysis for Sustainable Materials Management: Part of the Equation for Priority Setting

Frederick W. Allen U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, [email protected]

Priscilla A. Halloran U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Angela H. Leith U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

M. Clare Lindsay U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

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Allen, Frederick W.; Halloran, Priscilla A.; Leith, Angela H.; and Lindsay, M. Clare, "Using Material Flow Analysis for Sustainable Materials Management: Part of the Equation for Priority Setting" (2009). U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Papers. 114. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/usepapapers/114

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Papers by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. MATERIAL FLOW ANALYSIS Using Material Flow Analysis for Sustainable Materials Management Part of the Equation for Priority Setting

Frederick W. Allen, Priscilla A. Halloran, Angela H. Leith and M. Clare Lindsay

Many possible applications exist for material use, reuse, and dispose of the full range of materi- flow analysis (MFA). One of them is to help with als that come from and return to the Earth, such as sustainable materials management (SMM), a wood, minerals, nonrenewable fuels, chemicals, familiar concept to the readers of this journal— agricultural plants and animals, soil, and rock. “an approach to serving human needs by using/ Society uses vast amounts of materials and those reusing resources most productively and sustain- amounts are rapidly increasing, raising and/or ably throughout their potentially exacerbat- life cycles, generally MFA can offer many insights and ing a variety of critical minimizing the amo- should be an important part of priority resource and environ- unt of materials invol- mental issues. ved and all the asso- setting for sustainable materials man- In 2002, recognizing ciated environmental agement. However, since it only illu- the seriousness of these impacts” (EPA 2009). minates some of the issues that concern issues, the U.S. Envi- Governments and ronmental Protection industries around the policy makers with regard to materials Agency (EPA) pub- world are stepping up management, it must be used in con- lished a report, Be- their efforts to manage junction with other types of data. yond RCRA: Waste and materials sustainably. Materials Management But where should governments start? How should in the Year 2020 (EPA 2002). One of the key they set priorities on what materials to address? findings was that society should shift focus away A few hundred basic materials are transformed from managing waste toward managing materi- into many thousands of products, making priority als. When we address waste we often miss the setting critical and challenging. A recent analysis chance to make a difference far up the materi- indicates that MFA can and should be part of the als chain where many of the impacts of materials equation for priority setting, but only part. are initially generated. Although there will al- ways be some waste, the best way to conserve re- sources and reduce the impacts of resource use is Background to address the entire life cycle of materials, look- It is hard to overstate the economic and en- ing to improve materials choices and anticipat- vironmental significance of how people extract, ing resource conservation and recovery at every step. In 2007, the EPA decided it was time to de- c 2009 by Yale University. No claim to original US government works. velop a roadmap describing how the EPA and the DOI: 10.1111/j.1530-9290.2009.00168.x states might move more quickly toward SMM and Volume 13, Number 5 formed a workgroup of career staff from around

662 Journal of Industrial Ecology www.blackwellpublishing.com/jie MATERIAL FLOW ANALYSIS the agency and from four state environmental On this point the workgroup generally agreed agencies to accomplish this task. The workgroup with the conclusions reached by several other completed its report, Sustainable Materials Man- groups (e.g., Van der Voet et al. 2004), but the agement: The Road Ahead, in 2009 (EPA 2009). workgroup then chose to proceed with its analysis The report emphasized that life cycle materi- somewhat differently from earlier groups. als management casts a far broader net than tradi- Seeking to create a suitable analytic frame- tional government programs (usually focused on work for priority setting, the workgroup re- single media, such as air, water, and waste, and viewed several recent efforts, including one by the on single stages of the life cycle) and represents European Commission, the Environmental Im- a change toward more integrated environmental pacts of Products (EIPRO) study (Tukker and protection. The recommendations detailed mea- Jansen 2006). The EIPRO study identified prod- sures that the EPA and state agencies can take ucts used by households and government (final with current legal authorities, efforts needed to consumption) that potentially cause the great- build capacity to manage materials in the future, est life cycle environmental impacts, considering and ways to accelerate the public dialogue nec- various categories of impacts (e.g., global warm- essary to start a generation-long shift in how we ing potential and several forms of human and manage materials and create a green, resilient and ecological toxicity). competitive economy. The primary data source for EIPRO was the One specific recommendation was to “select Comprehensive Environmental Data Archive a few materials and/or products where an inte- (CEDA), which uses U.S. Bureau of Economic grated life-cycle materials management approach Analysis (BEA) input-output tables as its baseline could possibly achieve significant benefits for the list of materials, products, and services and offers a environment and reduce resource use,” based on high-level view of environmental impacts across an analysis of opportunities and likely collabora- the economy. The environmental impact infor- tion by key stakeholders, and then launch efforts mation is obtained by connecting data on mon- to demonstrate the benefits of life cycle materials etary flows and peer reviewed data on physical management (EPA 2009). It was in the context flows and environmental impacts associated with of these demonstration projects that the issue of the monetary transactions—for instance, emis- priority setting and the use of MFA arose. sions of CO2 or emissions of toxics to water. The results, based partially on MFA-type information, allow the user to compare environmental impacts The Analysis of such diverse materials, products, and services From the start the workgroup sought to focus as feed grains, pulp mills, textiles, metals, eating on materials and the ramifications of their flows establishments, and hospitals (Suh 2005). through the economy. In taking a systems view, After looking at several options, the work- it became clear that priority setting had to take group decided to use the latest version of CEDA into account the full life cycle of materials and (3.0) and adopted the BEA’s list of 480 com- products, the amounts of materials involved, the modities (materials, products, and services) as its inputs of energy and water resources along the life classification scheme. The new version of CEDA cycle, the amounts of material waste and included 13 environmental impacts as well as en- the associated environmental impacts all along ergy use. It also enabled the workgroup to ex- the materials/product chain. Policy makers are amine the 480 commodities from three different very concerned with all of these aspects. perspectives: “direct impact/resource use/waste,” MFA clearly is useful here, but it can only “intermediate consumption,” and “final con- be part of the equation for priority setting. MFA sumption.” All the perspectives examine every can illuminate the amounts of materials involved stage of the life cycle, but they yield different and the amounts of material waste, but it does results. The first perspective measures direct im- not include all the information necessary to as- pacts throughout the life cycle and does not in- sess potential impacts on human health and the clude embedded impacts. It is more likely to high- environment or energy and water consumption. light raw materials and intermediate products at

Allen, Using Material Flow Analysis for Sustainable Materials Management 663 MATERIAL FLOW ANALYSIS early stages in the life cycle where their uses are and development, food products and services, widely dispersed throughout the economy. The forestry, metals, nonrenewable organics, textiles, second perspective measures accumulated (direct and a small group of miscellaneous products and plus embedded) impacts throughout the life cycle services. and provides insights into impacts that accumu- Because the analysis was quite innovative and late in a product, whether it is intended for in- complex, the workgroup submitted it for indepen- termediate or final consumption. The third per- dent peer review. The reviewers agreed with the spective measures embedded impacts associated overall approach and concluded that the results with final products only, tending to show which were a reasonable starting point for identifying final products account for the greatest overall life materials, products, and services as priorities for cycle impacts. SMM demonstration projects. The workgroup then merged data on material use and waste from the World Resources Insti- tute’s MFA database1 and information on water Implications and Opportunities 2 use from the U.S. Geological Survey with the Several important implications and opportu- CEDA data. Because these information sources nities can be gleaned from this analysis for the used different classification schemes and levels application of MFA. of detail, extensive cross-walking was required. This produced 17 different categories of impacts 1. MFA can offer many insights and should or criteria that could be used for priority setting be an important part of priority setting for (13 environmental impacts, plus material use, sustainable materials management. How- material waste, energy use, and water use). Be- ever, because it only illuminates some of cause each category was expressed in different the issues that concern policy makers with units, relative statistical rankings were produced regard to materials management, it must for each category and then an applied vector anal- be used in conjunction with other types of ysis approach was used to produce a relative rank- data. The analysis described here enables ing of the 480 commodities in each of the three decision makers to choose approaches that perspectives. provide a range of environmental bene- Looking at the relative rankings of the 480 fits even when there is special interest in commodities and weighting each of the 17 crite- a particular goal, such as reducing global ria equally (as a way of getting started rather than warming potential. a value judgment), 38 of the commodities ranked 2. In light of the difficulties that the work- in the top 20 from at least one of the three per- group encountered in merging MFA data spectives. Slightly under half of the 38 ranked in with data from other sources, application the top 20 on only one or two of the three perspec- of MFA would be much easier if the archi- tives. All of the 17 criteria were important to the tects of the various databases anticipated outcomes, with different criteria being important this process. Moreover, to enhance the ap- for different commodities. Material use and ma- plication of MFA, it ought to be possi- terial waste, the two criteria directly supported by ble to incorporate or link into MFA ad- MFA, contributed significantly to the high rank- ditional environmental, energy, and water ings in each perspective for a diverse range of information. high-tonnage commodities. In most cases, other 3. To be of real use in a changing econ- criteria also were significant contributors to the omy, MFA and other databases used in this high rankings for these commodities. High rank- project all need better and more current ings for low-tonnage commodities were indirectly data. Too much of the data are as old as a supported by MFA-type information, because en- decade. vironmental impact criteria were based in part on 4. The approach used in this project opens data about physical flows. up many opportunities for further analy- The 38 highest ranking commodities can be sis of material flows and their effects, do- grouped into seven broad categories: construction ing new runs on the existing model and

664 Journal of Industrial Ecology MATERIAL FLOW ANALYSIS

creating new models to improve our ana- cal support document). Washington, DC: EPA. lytical abilities further. www.epa.gov/epawaste/inforesources/pubs/vision. 5. This analysis also can be used as a starting htm. Accessed September 2009. point to identify needs for better (and more Van der Voet, E., L. van Oers and I. Nikolic. 2004. transparent) MFA and life cycle data and Dematerialization: Not just a matter of weight. to identify products that should be priori- Journal of Industrial Ecology 8(4): 121–137. ties for multiattribute environmental per- formance standards and labels. About the Authors Frederick W. Allen, Priscilla A. Halloran, Notes Angela H. Leith, and M. Clare Lindsay are all on the staff of the U.S. Environmental Protection 1. http:// archive.wri.org/pubs/pubs_dataset.cfm?PubID Agency (EPA). They were part of the workgroup =3881 described in this column. Allen also is a member 2. http://water.usgs.gov/watuse/ of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Industrial Ecology. The views expressed here are their own References and not necessarily those of the EPA or the U.S. Government. Suh, S. 2005. Developing sectoral environmental database for input-output analysis: Comprehen- sive environmental data archive of the U.S. Eco- Address correspondence to: nomic Systems Research 17(4): 449–469. Frederick W. (Derry) Allen Tukker, A. and B. Jansen. 2006. Environmental im- Counselor, National Center for Environmental pacts of products: A detailed review of studies. Innovation Journal of Industrial Ecology 10(3): 159–182. Office of Policy, Economics and Innovation EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency). 2002. (1807T) Beyond RCRA: Waste and materials management in the year 2020. Washington, DC. www.epa.gov/ U.S. Environmental Protection Agency osw/inforesources/pubs/vision.pdf. Accessed Au- 1200 Pennsylvania Ave., NW gust 20, 2009. Washington, DC 20460 EPA. 2009. Sustainable materials management: The [email protected] road ahead (report and appendix – techni- www.epa.gov

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