Material Flow Accounts measure the physical flow of natural materials in the Irish economy and our environment. They provide an overview of how the country’s natural resources are extracted, traded, consumed, and measures how much emissions are generated through these processes and returned to the environment. This helps to assess resource efficiency, environmental impact, and and progress towards a circular economy.
The statistics cover:
- Domestic extraction of materials such as biomass, metals, non-metallic minerals (e.g. sand, gravel, stone), and fossil fuels
- Imports and exports of materials and products
- Domestic Material Consumption (DMC), which measures the total amount of materials used within the economy
- Material outputs back to the environment, including emissions to air, land, and water
- Indicators such as resource productivity, which show how efficiently materials are used to generate economic output.
