Mass Balance isn't just about raw data! Its what you do with them, its how you use them that counts. The majority of the completed studies have shown how precise resource flow data can be used to make more informed policy decisions on critical issues such as:
- Improved Policymaking
There are recurring examples (hazardous waste, fridges, electrical goods) where we as a nation have signed up to regulations without knowing the tonnage flows involved or, latterly, knowledge of how scrap materials move through the economy and the impact which policy instruments (fiscal or regulatory) have on the direction of such flows. In some cases this has resulted in poor regulation creating opportunities for criminal activity.
- Regional Planning
Our obligation to divert 60 million tonnes of materials away from landfill to alternative process technologies will result in unquantified impacts on the transport infrastructure and regional spatial planning systems in terms of intermediate and final processing facilities. Many – if not all – impacts from this process are tonnage related but these flows are little understood in a regional context.
- Producer Responsibility
Diverting the end of life management responsibility for scrap product streams in the economy presumes the existence of an adequate audit, monitoring and control system. This is needed to ensure compliance. In the case of non-compliant companies, the balance of probability is that compliance will be achieved through the use of Traded Pollution Permits. Without a detailed data collection infrastructure network, the legitimacy of such financial instruments is open to the risk of fraud or manipulation.
- Supply Chain Process Efficiency
Industrial product supply chains are driven obsessively by financial added value distribution from point of production to point of sale. Decision-making is entirely financially (internality) driven. Yet in the majority of cases, 90 per cent of the mass consumed in these supply chains ends up as waste, an area which receives less than 2% of management time. An “online” awareness of this imbalance often drives supply chains toward resource efficiency more readily – particularly against a backdrop where waste is the fastest growing area of real cost increases.
- Government Taxation Strategy
Economic instruments in relation to resources account for around 4 per cent total government income. Efforts to drive resource efficiency through regulation and subsidies can only go so far and it is in government’s interest to be able to model potential tax yields when altering supply chain and consumer behaviour with regard to resource consumption.
- Product Redesign
The main driver for product design in economies dominated by financial internality costs often result in environmentally unfriendly products. An ability to track high externality impact products or components through the whole life chain of products (including final disposal) can have significant potential impacts in terms of front of pipe product design – especially when coupled to the use of economic instruments.