Analysis of the paper and wood flow in The Netherlands

Current production structures require large amounts of primary materials and are not likely to be sustained without large implications for the environment. A good understanding of societal metabolism is likely to contribute to more sustainable production and consumption. Material flow analysis (MFA) intends to support this understanding by providing insight in material flows. In this article a new method for analyzing materials flows, called STREAMS, is tested. The method is applied to analyze the paper and wood flow through the economic system of The Netherlands. The method is based on data available from the so-called supply and use tables; these tables are made available by Statistics Netherlands and describe the economy of a country in terms of annual supply and use of goods and services by industries and consumers. The method proves to be very useful in analyzing the paper and wood flow in The Netherlands. The method provides detailed information about the final consumption of paper and wood, even for packaging materials and product parts made out of paper and wood. Trends are visible that statistical offices collect less physical data about material flows. This will make the construction of material flow analyses like this one more difficult in the future. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.