抄録
Environmental impacts of new technologies that are claimed to be environmentally beneficial are critically examined. This has been done by comparing the material and energy flow in its presence with that in its absence at sometime in near future. While the results showed that the most of them are certainly worthwhile to be developed, the difficulty and methodological complexity in quantitatively estimating their environmental impacts were large. It illustrated the urgent need for wide-range, comprehensive data sets and for a proper formula to utilize them. Resource productivity and eco-efficiency, which had been hitherto used rather ambiguously, were defined and characterized in this context. A parameter that stands for an ecologically benign use of resource, the greenity, was introduced in the process. It is expected that the application of these parameters would not only reduce the complexity of the environmental evaluation of new technologies but also encourage manufacturers to develop and employ the environmentally benign technologies.
