This indicator measures the volume of aggregated consumption of toxic chemicals, expressed in million tonnes. The consumption of chemicals is calculated as the sum of the production volumes (PRODCOM) and the net import volumes of the chemicals (COMEXT) according to the equation: Consumption = production + imports – exports. The data on hazardous and non-hazardous chemicals show the total consumption of all chemicals. The two sub-categories of hazardous chemicals – hazardous to human health and hazardous to the environment – overlap by definition and as a result their sum is not equal to the total consumption of hazardous chemicals.
The material footprint, also referred to as raw material consumption (RMC), represents the demand for the extraction of materials (minerals, metal ore, biomass and fossil energy materials) induced by consumption of goods and services within a geographical reference area. Data for material footprints stem from material flow accounts, which model the flows of natural resources from the environment into the economy. They include domestic extraction of materials measured in tonnes of gross material (for example, gross ore or gross harvest) as well as estimated imports and exports of the raw material equivalents of the products traded (domestic and abroad extraction required to produce the traded products). RMC thus measures the amount of extraction needed to produce the goods demanded by final users in the geographical reference area, irrespective of where in the world the material extraction took place.
The consumption footprint is a set of 16 life cycle assessment (LCA)-based indicators to assess the environmental impacts of the EU and its Member States consumption by combining data on consumption intensity and environmental impacts of representative products. It is based on the combination of: (a) the emissions to air, soil and water as well as the resources used along the life cycle of around 165 representative products, belonging to 5 areas of consumption (food, mobility, housing, household goods, and appliances), (b) the consumption intensities of those products, which are calculated based on consumption statistics, and (c) the Environmental Footprint (EF) impact assessment method, which translates emissions and resource consumption into 16 potential environmental impacts that can be aggregated into a single score. The EF impact indicators can be compared with a set of thresholds that are based on the Planetary Boundaries framework. Thus the single weighted score measures the number of times that the planetary boundary is transgressed.
The circular material use rate (CMR) measures the share of material recovered and fed back into the economy in overall material use. The CMU is defined as the ratio of the circular use of material to the overall material use. The overall material use is measured by summing up the aggregate domestic material consumption (DMC) and the circular use of materials. DMC is defined in economy-wide material flow accounts. The circular use of materials is approximated by the amount of waste recycled in domestic recovery plants minus imported waste destined for recovery plus exported waste destined for recovery abroad. A higher CMU rate value means that more secondary materials substitute for primary raw materials thus reducing the environmental impacts of extracting primary material.
This indicator measures all waste generated in a country. Major mineral wastes, dredging spoils and soils are included. This leads to high quantities of waste in some countries with substantial economic activities such as mining and construction.
The environmental goods and services sector (EGSS) is defined as that part of a country’s economy that is engaged in producing goods and services that are used in environmental protection and resource management activities either domestically or abroad. Gross value added in EGSS represents the contribution of the environmental goods and services sector to GDP and is defined as the difference between the value of the sector’s output and intermediate consumption.
The indicator measures the amount of economic output that is produced per unit of gross available energy. The gross available energy represents the quantity of energy products necessary to satisfy all demand of entities in the geographical area under consideration.The economic output is either given as euros in chain-linked volumes to the reference year 2010 at 2010 exchange rates or in the unit PPS (Purchasing Power Standard). The former is used to observe the evolution over time for a specific region while the latter allows comparing Member States in a given year.