Material consumption in the Czech Republic: Focus on foreign trade and raw material equivalents of imports and exports
Abstract
This article presents a comparison of indicators based on an economy-wide material flow analysis, namely imports, exports, domestic material consumption, raw material equivalents of imports, raw material equivalents of exports and raw material consumption. These indicators were calculated for the Czech Republic for 1995–2010 using, besides economy-wide material flow analysis, the hybrid input-output life cycle assessment method, which allows for a calculation of raw material equivalents of imports and exports.
The results showed that calculation of indicators including raw material equivalents is useful, as they provided some important information which was not obvious from imports, exports and domestic material consumption. This includes the facts that the latter indicators tended to underestimate environmental pressure related to consumption of materials, high dependency of the Czech production system on metal ores from abroad and quite unequal and unfair distribution of environmental pressures between the Czech Republic and its trading partners.