Resource intensity is a measure of the

resource ''Resource'' refers to all the materials available in our environment which are Technology, technologically accessible, Economics, economically feasible and Culture, culturally Sustainability, sustainable and help us to satisfy our needs and want ...

s (e.g.

water Water is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula . It is a transparent, tasteless, odorless, and Color of water, nearly colorless chemical substance. It is the main constituent of Earth's hydrosphere and the fluids of all known liv ...

energy Energy () is the physical quantity, quantitative physical property, property that is transferred to a physical body, body or to a physical system, recognizable in the performance of Work (thermodynamics), work and in the form of heat and l ...

material A material is a matter, substance or mixture of substances that constitutes an Physical object, object. Materials can be pure or impure, living or non-living matter. Materials can be classified on the basis of their physical property, physical ...

s) needed for the production, processing and disposal of a unit of

good In most contexts, the concept of good denotes the conduct that should be preferred when posed with a choice between possible actions. Good is generally considered to be the opposite of evil. The specific meaning and etymology of the term and its ...

service Service may refer to: Activities * Administrative service, a required part of the workload of university faculty * Civil service, the body of employees of a government * Community service, volunteer service for the benefit of a community or a ...

, or for the completion of a process or activity; it is therefore a measure of the efficiency of resource use. It is often expressed as the

quantity Quantity or amount is a property that can exist as a multitude or magnitude, which illustrate discontinuity and continuity. Quantities can be compared in terms of "more", "less", or "equal", or by assigning a numerical value multiple of a u ...

of resource embodied in unit cost e.g. litres of water per $1 spent on product. In national economic and sustainability accounting it can be calculated as units of resource expended per unit of

GDP Gross domestic product (GDP) is a monetary measure of the total market value of all the final goods and services produced and rendered in a specific time period by a country or countries. GDP is often used to measure the economic performance o ...

. When applied to a single person it is expressed as the resource use of that person per unit of consumption. Relatively high resource intensities indicate a high price or environmental cost of converting resource into GDP; low resource intensity indicates a lower price or environmental cost of converting resource into GDP.Lorentzen, J. (ed) 2008. ''Resource intensity, knowledge and development: insights from Africa and South America.'' HSRC Press, South Africa. Resource productivity and resource intensity are key concepts used in

sustainability measurement Sustainability measurement is a set of frameworks or indicators used to measure how sustainable something is. This includes processes, products, services and businesses. Sustainability is difficult to quantify and it may even be impossible to mea ...

as they measure attempts to decouple the connection between resource use and

environmental degradation Environment most often refers to: __NOTOC__ * Natural environment, referring respectively to all living and non-living things occurring naturally and the physical and biological factors along with their chemical interactions that affect an organism ...

. Their strength is that they can be used as a metric for both economic and environmental cost. Although these concepts are two sides of the same coin, in practice they involve very different approaches and can be viewed as reflecting, on the one hand, the efficiency of resource production as outcome per unit of resource use (resource productivity) and, on the other hand, the efficiency of

resource consumption Resource consumption is about the consumption of non-renewable, or less often, renewable resources. Specifically, it may refer to: * water consumption * energy consumption ** electric energy consumption ** world energy consumption * natural ...

as resource use per unit outcome (resource intensity). The sustainability objective is to maximize resource productivity while minimizing resource intensity.

References

Sustainability metrics and indices Natural resource management Resource economics Thermodynamics Energy economics {{energy-econ-stub

See also

References