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Friday, 05 August 2011 Edited by: Márton Herczeg

Key messages on material resource use and efficiency in Europe

The ETC/SCP has been working with the latest available Material Flow Accounts (MFA) and Environmentally Extended Input Output Tables (EE-IOT) to gain insights into some key challenges to be tackled by the the Resource Efficiency Roadmap currently under development by the European Commission. These insights include the findings that Europe’s global resource footprint is more than double its direct material input and is growing; Europe is becoming increasingly dependent on metal and fossil fuel imports; growth in energy and resource productivity has been slower than growth in labour productivity; the export market has become the key driver of global resource footprints for a number of countries; and that important resource efficiency gains can be achieved through redirecting household expenditure to product groups with low resource intensities.

The paper was originally submitted to DG Environment in May in support to the development of the Resource Efficiency Roadmap and is now being released as a public document.

The report can be found here