Abstract
One of the most important themes to promote Eco-design is the uti-lization of recycled materials. But little is known about the environmental information on total impacts from production of recycled materials in Japan.
In recent years, many studies concerning the methodologies of impact assessment have discussed to show one single index about total environmental impacts. The ques-tion of how to include “resource depletion” as a safeguard subject is still open. We have suggested a methodology that provides us a total indicator based on Japanese environ-mental problems and resource consumption.
In this paper a research program for investigating the environmental impacts of pro-duction metals in Japan is described. Moreover, the differences of environmental impacts between primary metals and secondary metals were discussed as a case study.
