Resources consumption

Technologies to minimize resource consumption, to promote waste recovery and to develop clean processes and products... 

The first well-known LCA study was funded by Coca-Cola in 1969. Its purpose was to compare resource consumption and emissions associated with beverage containers. During the energy crisis, several studies were performed with an emphasis on energy. Before 1990, LCA studies dealt mainly with emissions and use of resources and were limited to technical systems. 

Productivity is a measure of productive efficiency calculated as the ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it. Productivity can therefore be considered as a characteristic of a process, and therefore a measure of the quality of a process. Consider two process each producing the same product but one delivers the result using less resources and hence as a consequence has a higher productivity. The process with the higher productivity could thus be regarded as being of better quality. However, measuring resource consumption alone would not be a valid means of comparison as inputs could be vastly different. Hence productivity is a quality characteristic. 

Conduct simulation to establish provisional resource consumption including time, materials, labor, etc. 

In their original paper, Warshel and Levitt used MINDO/2 to treat the quantum-mechanical part of the system. Since then, different authors have tried all the most popular quantum-mechanical models. The quantum-mechanical part of the model tends to dominate resource consumption. 

The calculation of direct household costs of HIV/AIDS is quite difficult. First, resource consumption is hardly documented, so that patients have to be interviewed or be asked to keep household diaries for all expenditure due to their disease. Second, it is frequently not easy to allot a certain expenditure to a specific disease. Co-payments for drugs, practitioner, and hospital services as well as transport to and from the provider are easily allocated to the COI of this disease. But other direct household costs might be even higher, such as the costs of a special diet, but it is very difficult to analyze whether these costs are really incurred due to this illness. Studies demonstrate that direct household costs might be small in developed countries, but they might make up to 50% of the total COI in developing countries (Su et al. 2006). 

As discussed previously, direct COI are the economic representation of resource consumption and have a natural monetary value. They can occur on the provider and the household side. This chapter analyses the direct COI in four steps Provider cost before HAART (Sect. 2.1.1), provider cost in the HA ART era (Sect. 2.1.2), lifetime provider costs (Sect. 2.1.3), and direct household cost (Sect. 2.1.4). 

Establish a database on waste discharges, resource use, and reduction of waste production and resource consumption... 

The goal of the LCA case study on printed matter [8] was to identify the distribution of potential environmental impacts (hot spots) and resource consumption during the life cycle of generic sheet fed offset printed matter produced at a European model printing house. The functional unit is 1 ton of sheet fed offset printed matter (books, pamphlets, brochures, etc.). 

As focus in this chapter is on additives/chemicals and emissions, the impact category on resource consumption is not included. Results regarding resource depletion may be found in the case study report [8],... 

Exhaustion of energy resources Consumption of crude oil, natural gas, coal, uranium etc. 

Exhaustion of other limited resources Consumption of fertilisers, water (transpiration coefficient) etc. 

For one component to replace another, the replacement component need not work the same internally. However, the replacement component must provide at least the services that the environment expects of the original and must expect no more than the services the environment provides the original. The replacement must exhibit the same external behavior, including quality requirements such as performance and resource consumption. 

Stahel, W. R. (1997). The service economy wealth without resource consumption Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 355, 1386-1388. 

Hypothesis (14) Comprehensive sustainability innovations can be missed by continuous improvement in too small stages, e.g. the substantial reduction of both resource consumption and also toxic risks. 

Collection of resource consumption data from primary or secondary sources is essential for a prospective economic evaluation of a pharmaceutical therapy. Some data elements, such as patient preference assessments, can only be collected on a prospective basis. Other data elements, such as outpatient... 

While some prospective data collection is required for almost all pharmacoeconomic studies, the amount of data to be collected for the pharmacoeconomic evaluation is still the subject of much debate. There is no definitive means of addressing this issue at present. Phase II studies can be used to develop data that will help determine which resource consumption items are essential for the economic evaluation. Without this opportunity for prior data collection, however, we must rely upon expert opinion to suggest major resource consumption items that should be monitored within the study. Duplicate data collection strategies (prospective evaluation of resource consumption within the study s case report form with retrospective assessment of resource consumption from hospital bills) can be used to ensure that data collection strategies do not miss critical data elements. 

Sustainable material management has to pursue both economic and ecological objectives in order to succeed in global competition. Material flows have to be optimised in quantitative and qualitative terms so that the services in question can be rendered with maximum efficiency and minimal emissions. Moreover, business companies are generally aware of the fact that only those companies will survive that continuously improve their performance while enhancing customer orientation and, above all, avoiding excessive resource consumption. 

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