Panel 1
Renato Marra Campanale
Internal Material Consumption (IMC) measures the apparent consumption of material resources within an economy. It is the main indicator derived from material flow accounts, used to assess a country's resource Productivity as part of policies on natural resource use. In 2023, Italy's Internal Material Consumption amounted to 498.4 million tonnes (-2.7% compared to the previous year), and Resource Productivity stood at 3.59 EUR/kg (+3.7% compared to the previous year).
Internal Material Consumption (IMC; the internationally recognized English acronym is DMC) is the main indicator derived from the Economy-Wide Material Flow Accounts (EW-MFA). IMC measures the amount of materials directly used within an economic system and is calculated by subtracting 'Exports' from 'Direct Material Input' (which is the sum of 'Domestic Extraction of Materials Used' plus 'Imports'). It represents the quantity of materials that, by the end of the reference period, either become part of an economy's material stock (waste in controlled landfills; capital goods such as buildings, infrastructure, and machinery; durable consumer goods) or have been transformed into residual materials that return to the environment (emissions to air, water, and soil; dissipative use of products and losses). The IMC is used to calculate the 'Resource Productivity' indicator, which shows the relationship between economic activity and natural resource consumption. Resource Productivity, defined as the ratio between GDP and IMC, is one of the key indicators used to monitor circular economy policies.
The purpose is to monitor the goal of sustainable consumption and production and the decoupling between natural resource use and economic activity.
Regulation (EU) No. 691/2011 of the European Parliament and Council of July 6, 2011, concerning European environmental economic accounts.
Panel 2
Economy-wide material flow accounts. Handbook, 2018 edition. Eurostat, Luxembourg, 2018 (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/products-manuals-and-guidelines/-/KS-…)
System of Environmental-Economic Accounting 2012 - Central Framework. United Nations, New York, 2014 (https://seea.un.org/content/seea-central-framework)
The material flows of imports and exports refer to goods exchanged in international trade. Therefore, the Internal Material Consumption (IMC) does not include indirect material flows associated with international trade; these flows are calculated within the scope of material flows in raw material equivalents (RMEs).
Data quality assessment
Eurostat database:
Material flow accounts - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/env_ac_mfa/default/table?lang=en
Resource productivity - https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/env_ac_rp/default/table?lang=en
National
1990-2023 (Flussi di materia); 1995-2023 (Produttività delle risorse)
Indicator assessment
The indicators derived from the material flow accounts (EW-MFA) provide information on all physical exchanges between the anthroposphere and the natural environment, except for water and air used as such (i.e., not incorporated into products or residues, such as irrigation water in agriculture or air used for cooling industrial plants). These exchanges are expressed in terms of mass, and the aggregates consist solely of physical quantities measured in weight. The classification of materials related to the extraction of resources, imports, and exports is divided into four main categories ('biomass,' 'metallic minerals,' 'non-metallic minerals,' 'fossil fuels'), with additional categories for 'other products' and 'waste' applicable only to foreign trade flows. EW-MFA is part of the environmental accounts developed by the European Statistical System, consistent with the concepts and basic frameworks of national economic accounting and the guidelines adopted by international bodies for the development of an integrated environmental and economic accounting system. This approach is:
i) Multi-scale, as it allows analysis at both macro (whole economy) and meso (economic activity) levels;
ii) Multi-dimensional, as it integrates both economic and environmental dimensions.
In 2023, Italy's Internal Material Consumption (IMC) amounted to 498.4 million tonnes, corresponding to a Resource Productivity value of 3.59 EUR/kg. The status can be considered good when compared to the European average. In fact, Italy's per capita IMC in 2023 is 8.4 tonnes per capita, compared to 13.9 tonnes per capita in Europe, and the Resource Productivity in Italy, at 3.59 EUR/kg, is well above Europe's value (2.23 EUR/kg).
From 1995 to 2023, while GDP increased by over 19%, material consumption decreased by about 29%. This led to a growth in resource productivity by approximately 1.5 EUR/kg (+69%), indicating an overall improvement trend. However, it should be noted that, apart from the 2006-2013 period, when a significant drop in IMC was recorded, the environmental variable is strongly coupled with economic dynamics (Table 1, Figure 1).
Data
Figure 1: Resource productivity and its components.
ISPRA elaborations on Istat and Eurostat data.
Table 1: Resource productivity and its components.
Istat and Eurostat
Table 2: Internal material consumption and its components.
Istat and Eurostat
Table 3: Imports and exports by level of product processing
ISPRA elaborations on Istat and Eurostat data
Table 4: Dependency on imports.
ISPRA elaborations on Istat and Eurostat data
From 1995 to 2023, Italy's resource productivity increased by 69%. However, this growth was not constant. From 1995 to 2007, resource productivity fluctuated around 2.1 EUR/kg. Starting from the following years, characterized by the economic and financial crisis, the growth surged, reaching 3.3 EUR/kg in 2013 and 2014 and 3.5 EUR/kg in 2017 and 2018. This latter value was regained in 2023 after the positive trend reversed due to the pandemic crisis. The analysis of the components of resource productivity sheds light on the evolution of this composite indicator from 1995 to 2023. Three periods can be identified from 1995 to 2023, where IMC and GDP show a strong coupling. Up until 2006 and after 2013, GDP and IMC showed an absolute coupling. In the central period, the coupling of the two variables was relative: the fall in GDP before and after the economic crisis corresponds to the collapse in IMC, especially due to non-metallic minerals (Figure 1, Tables 1 and 2).
The material resources entering an economic system – represented by the indicators of internal extraction and imports in physical terms – can either be directly used within the economy (IMC) or exported and used abroad. Similarly to how it was done for resource productivity, IMC can be broken down into its components: internal extraction and net imports (Table 2). Italian exports – mainly consisting of finished products (Table 3) – grew throughout the 1995-2023 period, registering an overall increase of about 54% (Table 2). Imports – mostly raw materials (Table 3) – followed a more comparable trend with internal extraction. After internal extraction and imports reached their highest levels, respectively in 2006 and 2007, both variables (especially internal extraction) reversed their trend following the 2008-2009 economic crisis. From 2016 to 2023, internal extraction and imports reached comparable levels (around 336 million tonnes of materials extracted in Italy and 310 imported). In 2020, due to the pandemic crisis, internal extraction stood 38% lower than in 1995, and imports fell below the 1995 level (-4%; Table 2).
Finally, as indicated in Table 3, the Italian economy is highly dependent on imported raw materials. This external dependence, derived as a share of direct material input (the sum of internal extraction and imports), can be calculated by material type or overall (Table 4). From 1995 to 2023, the dependence on total materials grew from just over a third of direct material input in the early years to about half in recent years. At the material level, the Italian economy is self-sufficient only for construction materials. Biomass shifted from a dependence of about a quarter of the total to over 40% in recent years. Dependence on imported resources is almost total for metallic minerals and fossil fuels.