ABSTRACT
The decision-making processes in the public sector, over sustainability issues, are being supported by increasingly solid data, derived from the application of tools that quantify and compare material flows and/or the environmental footprint of societies, projects, programmes, and plans. A strategy formulated on solid data that gets regularly updated overtime will facilitate a process of continuous Circular Economy improvement. This chapter introduces a selection of the methodologies available to date: Material Flow Analysis (MFA), Value Chain Analysis, Environmental Input–Output Analysis, Life Cycle Assessment, Ecological Footprint, Environmentally weighted Material Consumption, and Land and Ecosystem Accounts. At a macro level, MFA is leveraged to “enhance the understanding of the material basis of the economy and the associated economic supply and demand issues and helps identify inefficient use of natural resources, energy and materials in process chains or the economy at large that would go undetected in conventional monitoring systems.
