Preliminary research on regional material flow analysis: a case study of Chengyang District in Qingdao.

摘要

The method 'material flow analysis (MFA)' is one of the effective tools to study law and quantification of material flow between economic system and ecological system. On the national level, economy-wide material flow analysis was published for a number of countries. However, published studies on the regional or local level are still very limited and a standardized method does not exist yet. On the basis of framework of material flow analysis proposed by Eurostat, the paper collected related data and analysed material input and output for the Chengyang district in Qingdao, Shandong, China. The results showed that direct material input (DMI) and total material requirement (TMR) in absolute number increased approximately 3.6 and 3.9 times, respectively from 1995 to 2004. Fossil fuel and mineral contributed to approximately 50.3-76.3% of DMI. Imports of material increased approximately 5.0 times and became the most important contributor to DMI, which showed that local economic growth was highly dependent on resources from other regions and countries. Domestic processed output (DPO) and total domestic output (TDO) represent slow increasing trend, and DPO contributed 22.2-58.1% of TDO, suggesting local hidden flows had obvious effect on TDO. The biggest component of DPO is CO2, approximately accounting for 90% of DPO. The material productivity increased 57.7% in last decade, reflecting improvement of efficiency of resources utilization in some extent. However, compared to developed countries and regions, material productivity of Chengyang district was relatively low. Therefore, to promote the sustainability, it is essential to develop circular economy and enhance materials productivity.