Substance Flow Analysis, Ecological Footprint Analysis And Their Application

The necessity and importance of carrying out material flow analysis for China was expounded. The history of domestic and international studies on material flow analysis was reviewed. And the methods of material flow analysis and the characteristics for each method were introduced, in which substance flow analysis and ecological footprint analysis are emphasized and applied in this paper.Two important concepts of "chain of product life cycles" and "chain group of product life cycles", which were advanced by Prof. Lu Zhongwu, are essential for understanding the specific features of substance flow analysis. Standing-observing method and following-observing method of substance flow analysis are brought forth by these two useful concepts. Standing-observing method observes substance flow vertically with the chain of product life cycles, while following-observing method observes substance flow along with the chain of product life cycles.The status quo of copper cycle for China from 1998 to 2003 was analyzed by standing-observing method and following-observing method. Materials self-support ratio and copper scraps use ratio in the stages of refined copper production and copper products manufacture were obtained. Besides these, the values of copper resource efficiency, copper ore index and copper scrap index were calculated. The variations of social reservoir and social reservoir per capita during this period were also derived by standing-observing method.Statistical entropy analysis was carried out on the analytic results of standing-observing method and following-observing method. The variations of statistical entropy in the processes of these two methods were calculated. Some measures of reducing the increment of statistical entropy in the copper products life cycle were put forward and the variation of statistical entropy after improvement was described.Some important equations between the recycling indexes, such as copper resource efficiency, copper ore index, copper scrap index (also containing self-produced copper scrap index), copper ecoefficiency (ecoefficiency for production and ecoefficiency for product life...