Decoupling well-being from resource use and its associated environmental impacts through resource efficiency and circular economy has become the mainstream agenda for sustainable development. Resource productivity and material flow indicators have been widely used to evaluate resource decoupling. Several approaches have been introduced in Europe to calculate the life cycle environmental impact of resource use at the macro-level and assess impact decoupling. However, no studies have been conducted to estimate the overall aggregated environmental impact (total environmental impact) associated with resource use in all resource categories using statistical data at the national level and life cycle inventory databases in Japan. This study is the first assessment of the total environmental impact at the national level in Japan, particularly addressing the production process for 213 materials. The study makes it possible to distinguish the 4 phases for environmental impact generation (foreign supply chain, domestic supply chain, production process, and use), 12 environmental impact areas, and the resource category (biomass, fossil, metal, and non-metallic mineral) of each material. The study shows that there is a higher impact generated by production and foreign supply chain phases in biomass and fossil resources such as crops, livestock, dairy products, and petroleum and coal products as well as some metals (steel and copper). These results imply that measures to reduce resource use and improve energy efficiency in direct production and foreign supply chains through local resource procurement and further resource-efficient approaches, including the circular economy, should be prioritized for Japan, with its resource-scarce and manufacturing-oriented economy.

中文翻译：

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日本材料生产的总体环境影响

通过资源效率和循环经济将福祉与资源利用及其相关的环境影响脱钩已成为可持续发展的主流议程。资源生产率和物质流指标已被广泛用于评估资源脱钩。欧洲已经引入了几种方法来在宏观层面计算资源使用的生命周期环境影响并评估影响脱钩。然而，尚未进行任何研究来使用日本国家层面的统计数据和生命周期清单数据库来估计与所有资源类别中的资源使用相关的总体总体环境影响（总环境影响）。这项研究是日本首次在国家层面对总体环境影响进行评估，特别是解决 213 材料的生产过程。该研究可以区分环境影响产生的 4 个阶段（国外供应链、国内供应链、生产过程和使用）、12 个环境影响领域和资源类别（生物质、化石、金属和非金属）矿物）的每种材料。研究表明，生物质和化石资源（如农作物、牲畜、乳制品、石油和煤炭产品以及一些金属（钢和铜））的生产和国外供应链阶段产生的影响更大。这些结果表明，通过本地资源采购和进一步的资源高效方法，包括循环经济，在直接生产和外国供应链中减少资源使用和提高能源效率的措施，