The Resource Cycle

Whenever material consumption takes place it is associated with a resource cycle beginning with the extraction of resources (materials and energy). These resources are transformed during a number of processing, manufacturing and transportation processes until the product becomes available to the consumer. During his use of the product further resources may be required such as energy, water or detergents. During these processes - and often during the use of the product in question - emissions and wastes are inevitably created. Further emissions and/or waste are created when the product is disposed of. In quantity the emissions and wastes are equal to to the prime use of resources.

To some extend the use of prime resources - or the net use of resources - is often reduced by the application of recycled materials or parts. Then the amount of emissions and waste are reduced to the same extend. The net resource flow is reduced. The amount of resources used for the recycling proces however is added to this net flow.

Increasing resource productivity means to make our present resource cycles "leaner" in the future - except for the recycling part, which preferably should become "fatter". To increase resource productivity is to reduce the net quantity of resources used per unit of material consumption (per refrigerator or per chair or per spoon) with the corresponding reduction in the quantity of emmissions and waste - in this way reducing the impact on the environment per unit of consumption.

The primary goal is to use fewer resources per prduct unit and to reduce emissions and waste during production and product use to a minimum. "Cleaner technology" in other words. One of the tools used in this proces are Life Cycle Analyses (LCA). An additional way of achieving the reduction in net resource use is to increase recycling.

To achieve radical improvements in resource productivity breakthroughs in science and technology will be required.

On top of that longer product lifetimes for durable goods should be a goal. Results in this direction are not reflected in the resource cycles as such, but obviously will contribute to reduce total resource consumption and impacts on the environment.

In some manufacturing processes recycling is done directly. For instance in the manufacturing of stone wool insulating material wastes from cutting panels to size are taken directly back for recycling in the melting owen at the beginning of the process. Glassbottles taken back to a brewery for renewed use is another example of direct recycling. But more often recycling will be indirect. For instance in making an electric moter, copper in the windings will to a great extend be recycled copper, coming from pools of such material, and having previously served for many different types of purposes. And when our motor is scrapped, its copper content will probably go to some recycling operator.

In such cases our resource cycle diagram could be shown with a gap in the recycling part. The size of the recyling input respectively output arrows can of course be different, or one of them could be totally missing (or both in the worst case).
Aggregating resource cycles for an entire sector of industry sometimes will close gaps in the recycling part. Analyses of such type can be usefull in evaluating the environmental impact of total sectors.