ABSTRACT
Recognition of the links between mass production, mass consumption and environmental pollution, in principle at least, opened a window of opportunity to seek to combine economic recovery with greater environmental sensitivity in the organization of production, circulation and consumption of commodities. The point of departure is recognition of the crisis of mass production and mass consumption that grew increasingly severe from the second half of the 1960s in the countries of the advanced capitalist world. Industrial metabolism is an approach which, at its simplest, involves constructing a balance sheet of the physical and chemical inputs to and outputs from production. By tracing through the ecological impacts, in terms of inputs from and outputs to the natural environment, of particular methods and forms of organization of production, the implications of possible choices of production technologies can be clarified. The industrial metabolism approach is based on a biological analogy and, as such, at best incorporates a very limited conception of social process.
