What do we see?
Over the period from 2012 to 2021, the moving average first shows a steady increase. From 2019 onwards, the materials footprint decreases. Across the board, the value in 2021 is 2% higher than in 2012; expressed per capita we see a decrease from 30.4 to 29.5 tonnes per capita, a decrease of 3%. The decrease visible in the last data points has yet to be confirmed because this is where the impact of the COVID crisis is reflected: the value itself increased again in the year 2021, but this is not visible in the moving average.
What’s the aim?
The materials footprint of Flemish consumption ideally captures the consumption of materials inside and outside Flanders to meet the needs of the Flemish economy. Linked to this consumption are environmental impacts such as greenhouse gas emissions or emissions related to waste. That is why the Flemish Government has adopted a target for this indicator: the materials footprint must be reduced by 30% by 2030 and by 75% by 2050.
What does this indicator measure?
The RMC is calculated on the basis of material flow accounts for the Flemish economy. These are compiled at country level; for Flanders, an estimate is made. Imported and exported goods and services are then converted into the amount of raw materials needed to produce these goods. To do this, more than 9,000 trade flows are converted to extracted raw materials using less than 200 coefficients. This allows us to express imports and exports in raw material equivalents. Numerical values may still change in subsequent updates due to usual adjustments in the underlying trade data. We use a three-year moving average because the values in RMC fluctuate quite a bit from year to year.
There is also an alternative method of calculation, starting from final consumption in Flanders. With the Flemish input-output model, we find out upstream how many primary raw materials the global production network needed. To do so, economic data for the Flemish and global economy are linked to corresponding environmental data.
The evolutions in the numerical values obtained through both methods are similar. The RMC is used for annual monitoring; the calculation via the Flemish input-output model is regularly carried out in parallel because it allows to better interpret the evolutions in number values.
