FIN-MIPS-projekt has ended autum 2008. Projects publications, in finnish.

Did you know that producing a gramme of platinum consumes 350 kg of unrenewable resources? The catalytic converter in the car's engine contains roughly 3 grammes of platinum. Although catalytic converters have cleaned the air in Finland, they have also resulted in for example large mountains of mining waste in South Africa. 

The amount of material used can serve as an indicator for the impacts on the environment. Often emissions and wastes are used as indicators of environmental impacts. They give the qualitative impact to a certain environmental risk (such as nutrient emissions and eutrophication). The amounts of material used for goods and services reveal the magnitude of the impacts. Thus, a large material use of a service tells that the service has a large overall potential to cause environmental harm.

The ecological rucksack is the amount of material in kilos that is consumed somewhere in the planet to produce a good, to use it and to dispose of it. Every product carries this invisible burden.
For example the life cycle of a bus consumes 4 million kilogrammes of abiotic raw material, 42 million litres of water and 780 thousand kilogrammes of air.

Picture: Sakari Autio

MIPS shows how much material is used in relation to the service performed. Thus it is easy to compare, to each other, service solutions, which provide the same benefit but are produced differently. For example one can compare a trip of one kilometer traveled by one person in a car or in a bus.
For example travelling one kilometer in a bus in Finland consumes 320 grammes of abiotic raw material, 3.2 litres of water and 60 grammes of air per traveller, whereas travelling by a passenger car consumes 1.44 kg of abiotic material, 14.5 litres of water and 140 grammes of air.

MIPS = MI/S = material input / service unit = material input per service unit

MI means the whole material requirement of a product's or service's life cycle from the extraction of all the raw material till the dispose of the waste. It is measured in kilogrammes. The weight of the product is also calculated to MI.

MI is calculated in five different categories.

S is the service unit. It is the amount of the service or benefit provided by the product. For instance it is the kilometers travelled by car, or amount of clean laundry provided by a washing machine.

On the Picture: The MIPS method was developed by Professor Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek at the Wuppertal Institute in Germany in the early 1990's.

Increasing Eco-efficiency

When the amount of natural resources required for a product, and thus also the MIPS value goes down, the resource productivity goes up. Productivity can be enhanced either by decreasing material use (MI) or increasing the benefit, or service (S) provided.

Decreasing raw material use (MI)

• Switch to raw material and energy sources that have a small ecological rucksack (MI-factor).

• Using recycled material in manufacturing.

• Making products lighter (less material use) while keeping the amount of service from the product the same.

• Increasing the productivity in the use of material in processes and manufacturing.

• Reducing transportation.

• Using products for a longer time (durable, timeless, reusable, refillable and repairable products).

• Using materials more efficiently in all the stages of their life cycle (refill, reuse, repair, recycle, less complex material use and structure of  products)

• Changing marketing and sale strategies to increase resource efficiency

-selling the right to use a product instead of selling the whole product (renting, leasing out)

   -shared use of products and services (public transportation, car-sharing, launderette)

   -selling a service instead of a product (voice mail, instead of an answering machine)

• MIPS categories
  
• Existing MIPS figures
• Platinium example and more MI (Material Intensity) factors calculated by the Wuppertal Institute. Wuppertal Institute's Material Intensity factors.
  
• Bus example Satu Lähteenoja, Michael Lettenmeier, Arto Saari, 2006. The natural resource consumption of the Finnish transport system. The Finnish Environment 820en/2006, Environmental Protection Department, 104 p.
• The Wuppertal Institute
• Sustainable Europe Research Institute (SERI)