Panel 1
Renato Marra Campanale
The indicator quantifies the extraction of natural resources - biomass, metallic minerals, non-metallic minerals, and fossil fuels - globally, due to the final consumption and investments of households, businesses, and public administrations in Italy. In 2023, Italy's material footprint amounted to 656.1 million tons, or 11.1 tons per capita.
For a more comprehensive assessment of the material flows associated with the functioning of an economy, it is essential to consider not only domestic material consumption and resource productivity but also the flows necessary to produce imported and exported goods and services. These are the indirect flows, which represent part of the so-called ecological rucksack, which is transformed into waste or emissions. A more comprehensive framework can be provided by expressing imports and exports in "equivalent raw material resources," known in international literature as "raw material equivalents" (RME). For example, the RMEs of a given quantity of cereals traded abroad consist not only of the cereals themselves but also of what was necessary to extract to produce all the products (goods and services) used as inputs (intermediate consumption) in the cultivation activity, such as oil used to produce fuel for agricultural machines and raw materials from which fertilizers used on the soil are derived. It is important to note that the part of the RME not physically contained in the imported goods and services has become waste returned to the natural environment or accumulated in landfills abroad. This part constitutes the indirect flow of imports. The same applies to exports. If, in addition to the direct flows with foreign countries, the indirect flows are also considered – i.e., the resources extracted and used to produce the goods and services traded abroad – the imports and exports in RMEs are obtained. The indicator measures the total amount of raw materials extracted to meet the internal demand of the economic system, quantifying the extraction of natural resources - biomass, metallic minerals, non-metallic minerals, and fossil fuels - globally due to the final consumption and investments of households, businesses, and public administrations in Italy.
The purpose is to assess the amount of raw materials used to meet internal demand, providing a representation of the impact of resource use, including materials extracted within the country and those indirectly used abroad to produce imported goods.
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Panel 2
- Documentation of the EU RME model. Eurostat, February 2024
(https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/1798247/6874172/Documentation+of+the+EU+RME+model/)
- Handbook for estimating raw material equivalents of imports and exports and RME-based indicators on the country level, based on Eurostat's EU RME model. Eurostat, February 2024 (https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/documents/1798247/6874172/Handbook-country-RME-tool)
The estimates derive from the application of an environmental-economic model made available by Eurostat. The model is subject to further development, considering ongoing methodological comparisons at the international level for such estimates. The derived estimates constitute experimental statistics due to their high statistical uncertainty.
Data quality assessment
EUROSTAT (Ufficio Statistico delle Comunità Europee)
Eurostat: https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/web/main/data/database
National
2008-2023
Indicator assessment
The calculation of material needs "upstream" can be performed in various ways, primarily based on Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) input inventories or using the more comprehensive, but much less detailed, Input-Output model used in economic analysis. Often, these two methods are "hybridized," as in the case of the base structure Input-Output model made available by Eurostat to estimate direct and indirect material flows linked to foreign trade.
In 2023, Italy's material footprint amounts to 656.1 million tons. The status can be considered good when comparing the per capita data with the European average. Italy's per capita material footprint in 2023 is 11.1 tons per capita, compared to 14.1 tons per capita for the EU.
The significant reduction in material footprint from 2008 to 2023, amounting to nearly 40%, was entirely achieved during the period 2008-2013. From 2013 onwards, the material footprint has not deviated from the average value for 2013-2023, which is 640.8 million tons. This means that since 2013, the Italian economic system has been unable to change its production and consumption patterns (Figure 1, Table 1).
Data
Figure 1: Trend of Material Footprint in Italy
Eurostat
Table 1: Material Footprint
Eurostat
The data presented for this indicator are based on 'foreign trade material flows expressed in raw material equivalents' (MFA in RME). Estimating MFA in RME means reporting all material flow indicators in terms of extracted natural resources. This means that, while in Internal Material Consumption (equal to internal extraction plus imports minus exports) only imported and exported products (direct flows) are considered, in Raw Material Consumption both direct foreign trade flows and those necessary to produce the imported and exported goods and services (indirect flows) are considered. Indirect flows do not appear in the actual weight of a product (e.g., the weight of a car), but are embedded within it (continuing with the car example: the weight of the numerous materials used in the product chain that starts with the extraction of material, followed by their transformation into raw materials, further processing, and assembly, culminating in the final production stage; these are materials not necessarily all included in the final product). In 2023, Italy's material footprint amounted to 656.1 million tons, or 11.1 tons per capita, which is 1.3 times higher than the Internal Material Consumption (9.8 tons per capita) because it considers not only what directly enters and exits the country but also all resources involved in the production and exchange process, thus providing a more comprehensive evaluation of the impact of resource use.