Resource Use Matters, but Material Footprints Are a Poor Way to Measure It

Posted2 months agoActive2 months ago

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SustainabilityEnvironmental EconomicsResource Management

Key topics

Sustainability

Environmental Economics

Resource Management

The article discusses the limitations of using material footprints as a measure of resource use, sparking a discussion on the complexities of measuring environmental impact.

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01Story posted
Oct 26, 2025 at 10:21 AM EDT
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Discussion (5 comments)

Showing 5 comments

burch45

2 months ago

1 reply

I have never heard of “material footprint” and from the definition it seems entirely worthless. The article doesn’t start with any reason why anyone would be interested in this measure, just that comment it is starting to show up in reports.

strken

2 months ago

1 reply

I would have assumed it would be relevant to supply chains. I too do not understand its relevance to consumption. It seems like you could substantially increase your material footprint by digging two holes and swapping the soil, which is a little silly.

That being said, GDP is also a silly measure: I pay you a billion dollars to slap yourself, you pay me a billion dollars to stomp on my own foot, and we've just raised GDP by $2bn. Despite its ridiculous nature, in practice it seems to correlate with the things we do care about.

gruez

2 months ago

>That being said, GDP is also a silly measure: I pay you a billion dollars to slap yourself, you pay me a billion dollars to stomp on my own foot, and we've just raised GDP by $2bn.

In practice no because it won't be picked up by government statisticians for being obviously bogus.

xnx

2 months ago

Monetary cost is a much better way to measure environmental impact.

bluGill

2 months ago

Also not addressed is recycling. If you wear out same goods you can landfill it or recycle it. if we care about copper running out this matters. but as the article notes copper is a tiny amount of total material used, even though we should worry about running out.

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ID: 45712118Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 2:30:18 PM

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