Regional Metabolism: A Material and Product Flow Accounting Model for Trentino, Italy

Paper in proceeding, 2024

Material flow accounting (MFA) can be applied to systematically quantify material inputs, outputs and throughputs to and from a geographical area, providing particularly relevant insights into managing resource flows and stocks, and identifying opportunities to close material cycles, moving from a linear to a circular economy. Remarkable advances in recent years have been made on the application of MFA to regions and cities, in particular going beyond material to product flows and providing increased details on life-cycle stages of products across these flows, which are crucial to estimate, understand and manage their associated environmental impacts. This chapter presents an MFA model of the Autonomous Province of Trento (Trentino) in northern Italy, and of the province’s capital city Trento. The main purpose is to establish a model to estimate direct material inputs (DMI) and domestic material consumption (DMC) in thousand tonnes per year (reference year 2019), relying on publicly available online data on domestic resource extraction, industrial production, trade, freight transportation and waste generation. The DMC was 12.8 and 13.5 tonnes per capita in the province and in Trento, respectively; the result is below the EU mean of 14.2, but significantly higher than the reported DMC for Italy in the same year of 8.3 tonnes per capita. Accounting and characterizing resource flows associated with urban areas and regions is crucial to increase resource efficiency and mitigate environmental impacts at local, regional and global levels. Advanced detailed MFA models at city and regional levels can inform and support environmentally sustainable planning and policymaking.