The Application Of Ecological Footprint And Material Flow Analysis To Automobile Industry

The quickly development of the automobile industry results in serious environment problems. Commonly, people pay their attention to the energy consumption and exhaust gas in the automobile usage step. Actually, all of the steps including material production, automobile manufacturing and usage consume resource and discharge pollution. Thereby, we should take all the life cycle steps into account when analyzing the automobile environmental problems. Ecological Footprint and Material Flow Analysis give us new methods to calculate the environmental influence of the automobile.First, the thesis defined the life cycle steps of the automobile and gave the definition of automobile industry system. Then, the thesis calculates a certain car's ecological footprint. In the same time, it analyses the result from the aspects of numerical value, analysis steps and land type, and compared the result with overseas study. The thesis improved the material flow analysis method to analyze the automobile industry. It gave us a model to calculate and compare the environmental influence of the car and passenger car.The thesis mainly focuses on the following:(1) The thesis gave the definition of automobile industry system. The system includes four steps : material production, gasoline production, automobile manufacturing and usage. Resource consumes and pollution discharges in every step. So, we can analyze the automobile environmental influence fully.(2) The function unit in the thesis is "per carrying capacity". The definition can be used to compare the environmental influence of different automobiles.(3) It is the first time that we use ecological footprint method in the automobile industry. Based on the results, the thesis gave some advices to the automobile environmental policy. In the calculate method, the thesis adds the water account. And it used the life cycle inventory for reference to select calculating items.(4) MFA was commonly used in the country or region level. The thesis added the life cycle eco-impact assessment method to MFA. So, the MFA method can be used in the automobile industry. The thesis gave a model to assess and compare the environmental influence of the car and passenger car.