Research of Material Metabolism and Dematerialization in Heilongjiang Province Based on MFA

Based on MFA framework, Heilongjiang Province was chosen as the study area to analyze the changing trend of material input and output from 2003 to 2015. Direct material input(DMI) and domestic processed output(DPO) were selected to explore the interactions between environments and economic development and logarithmic mean weight divisia index(LMDI) was used to measure the influences of related factors. The results are as follows. First, during the study period, total material requirement (TMR) and Total Material Output (TMO) declined gradually after 2011, but their total amount was still higher than the initial period. DMI mainly consists of biological material and fossil fuels, and solid waste is the main part of DPO. Second, DMI and DPO were at different evolutionary stage. The influence of DMI was declining in relation to the environmental total impacts, but the relationship was not stable. And DPO was in the stage from the peak of output per unit of GDP to the peak of output per capita. Third, economic scale effect contributed greatly to the growth of DMI and DPO. Population size had a positive impact on the growth of DMI and DPO at the beginning but turned to negative impact later on. While technology progress made great contribution to the DMI and DPO reduction, cleaner production effect did not function properly to restrain the growth of DPO.