accounting for resources, 1: Economy-Wide Applications of Mass-Balance Principles to Materials and Waste

Explains how principles and methods developed to track the flow of money in classical accounting can be applied to quantifying and measuring the flow of resources and the dispersion of waste materials, both at the process level and the materials level. After explaining industrial metabolism, focuses on systematically applying the mass- balance principle to estimate material losses at different stages of the production process. Takes as an example a cluster of industries related to chlorine. Also introduces Exergy, a common single measure for evaluating and comparing process or sectorial resource or waste flows between time periods, between sectors, and between regions and nations. Concludes with some policy recommendations. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.