THE STUDY OF CARBON MATERIAL FLOW EVALUATION OF RESOURCE RECYCLING SERVICES IN TAIWAN

Carbon footprint is a measuring index to assess the environmental impacts from human activities. However, former studies of CO2 with aspect of material flow analysis (MFA) usually concerned about the direct CO2 emission and its environmental and economic impacts within single enterprise, industry sector or economy but didn’t consider essentially the connections with sectors as well. They also paid more attention to direct emissions from the output and ignore those indirect emissions from the process. This study was based on the frame of MFA, with combination of economic input-output table (I/O table), in order to evaluate carbon material flow of resource recycling services in Taiwan and obtain a complete carbon footprint calculation from the input, considering both direct and indirect carbon input strength which means extending the frame of carbon MFA index. We hope this study can provide a basis of decision making on the issues of dematerialization and decarbonization, therefore, stride forward to the target of sustainable development. This study has compiled and analyzed PAS 2050 which announced in Oct. 2008 systematically and completely and also has accomplished the 2007 material flow balance illustration of Taiwan and its extending discussion. The results showed that although GHGs emissions in Taiwan increased progressively complying with Total Material Requirement (TMR) from the past to nowadays, but there’s no notable relation between emissions and Direct Material Input (DMI) nor Indirect Flow (IF). On the part of components of TMR, GHGs emissions increased in direct ratio with the demand of energy and also the same with GDP. Furthermore, according to the 2006 IPCC Guidelines of National GHGs Inventories, the 2007 GHGs emissions estimation of resource recycling and waste disposal services in Taiwan was 4.083 million metric tons (MMT) CO2-e, it’s higher than the data of 2006 and was lower prior to datas of 2005. The embodied carbon which calculated in the unit of tons CO2-e per million NTD of agricultural sector was 16, industrial sector was 27, service industry was 7 and the sector of environmental protection services was 11. This study also proposed a draft of GHGs inventory procedure, provided as a reference for those who’re going to establish their own ones.

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