accounting for resources, 1: Economy-Wide Applications of Mass-Balance Principles to Materials and Waste

This innovative book presents new research on the increasingly important need to account for the use of resources, and the dispersion of waste materials. It considers resource accounting both at the process level and at the materials level, and in addition offers policy suggestions for waste and resource accounting.The book opens with an introduction to industrial metabolism and its various implications. It then goes on to examine resource accounting at the national and sectoral level, through the systematic application of the mass-balance principle to estimate materials losses at different stages of the production process. It then examines one cluster of industries (related to chlorine) in greater detail. At the process level the use of chemical process simulation software in the estimation of waste emissions is examined, specifically focusing on cases where emissions data is unavailable or unreliable. Finally it introduces, for the first time, a common single measure for evaluating and comparing process or sectoral resource and waste flows between time periods, between sectors and between regions and nations. This measure is known as exergy, and although not new in itself, it has never before been used systematically for these purposes. In conclusion the author summarizes the main problems of resource and waste accounting and offers some policy recommendations for the implementation of accounting for resources. Accounting for Resources, 1 will be welcomed by environmental managers and scientists, economists, practitioners and government policymakers.

Table of Contents:
Contents: 1. Background: Industrial Metabolism and Materials Flow Analysis (MFA) 2. Agricultural Industries 3. Forest Industries 4. Extractive Materials: Fuels 5. Extractive Materials: Minerals and Metals 6. Chemical Industry Material Flows and Wastes: Inorganic Chemicals 7. Chemical Industry Material Flows and Wastes: Organic Chemicals 8. Lost Mass, Wastes and Toxic or Hazardous Emissions 9. Counting with Dollars: From Mass-Flow to Input–Output

About the Author :
The late Robert U. Ayres, formerly Novartis Professor (Emeritus) of Management and the Environment, INSEAD, France and Institute Scholar, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria and the late Leslie W. Ayres, formerly Research Associate, Centre for Management of Environmental Resources, INSEAD, France

Review :
'This detailed and comprehensive presentation of years of research and thought by the authors, demonstrates that they have made substantial progress towards their goal. This is an important and impressive publication. Important, because it provides the most comprehensive examination of the physical workings of the industrial economy of the United States known to exist. Impressive, because it represents the efforts of only two individuals whose span of technical competence makes them truly unique. The book, which contains both general overview, and detailed technical chapters, has something for everyone with an interest in this subject . . . This book is a major contribution towards understanding what is required to bring our industrial economy into harmony with our environment. To accomplish this, the authors, by their own admission, were required to do considerable detective work. In doing this hard work they have made the task of those who follow considerably easier.'