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Identifying the Substance Flow of Metals Embedded in Japanese International Trade by Use of Waste Input-Output Material Flow Analysis (WIO-MFA) Model
Kenichi NAKAJIMA,1)* Keisuke NANSAI,1,2) Kazuyo MATSUBAE,3) Yasushi KONDO,4,5) Shigemi KAGAWA,6) Rokuta INABA,1) Shinichiro NAKAMURA4) and Tetsuya NAGASAKA3)
1) National Institute for Environmental Studies, 16-2 Onogawa, Tsukuba, Ibaraki, 305-8506 Japan. E-mail: nakajima. kenichi@nies.go.jp 2) ISA, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia. 3) Graduate School of Engineering, Tohoku University, Miyagi, 980-8579 Japan. 4) Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University, Tokyo, 169-8050 Japan. 5) Industrial Ecology Programme, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, NO-7491 Norway. 6) Faculty of Economics, Kyushu University, Fukuoka, 812-8581 Japan. (Received on June 27, 2011; accepted on August 2, 2011)

This study proposes a method of combining a waste inputoutput material flow analysis (WIO-MFA) model with trade statistical data to identify the flows of substances embedded in trade commodities. We focused on the case of Japan as a typical processing and trading country, and we estimated each mass of iron and aluminum embedded in the imports and exports of 300 product items categorized in the WIOMFA. We found that iron ore imported from Australia, Brazil, and India as a raw material is processed and exported to South Korea, China, and other Asian countries as steel materials and to the United States as steel materials and automobiles. Primary aluminum imported from Russia, Australia, and Brazil as a raw material is processed and exported to Asia as rolled materials and to the United States as rolled materials and automobiles. KEY WORDS: material flow analysis; substance; international trade; inputoutput analysis; sustainable resource management.

1. Introduction Studies of greenhouse gases (GHGs) embedded in foreign trade flows abound (e.g. see Hertwich and Peters,1) Guo et al.,2) Weber et al.,3) Xu et al.,4) and Weinzettel et al.5)). However, detailed material flow analysis (MFA) studies of the materials embedded in foreign trade flows are rare. Exceptions to this are the studies by Weinzettel et al.,5) Wang et al.,6) Izard et al.,7) Johnson et al.8) and Halada et al.9) Weinzettel et al. considered not embedded material/ substance but the embodied material input for final demand by input-output (IO) model. Both Wang et al.6) and Izard et al.7) considered the flows of iron and steel embedded in trade commodities distinguished by country or region. Jonson et al.8) considered flow of chromium, copper, silver, lead and zinc embedded in United States trade by using the United Nations Commodity Trade Statistics Database (UN Comtrade10)) and the metals contents coming from a wide variety of sources, including peer-reviewed literature, manufacturer data, expert opinions, and informed estimates. Halada,9) by using the UN Comtrade,10) considered not embedded substances but the direct flows of iron, aluminum, copper, nickel, gold, platinum, cobalt, tungsten, and tantalum. Here, embedded substance means a substance that is a component of a commodity. Although the materials industries emit substantial amounts of GHGs, their products
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are vital in increasing energy efficiency in the use phase of the products made from these materials. Furthermore, emissions originating from the production phase can be reduced by efficient recycling. Recently, the issue of sustainable management of materials has been increasingly recognized. Accordingly, we find it important to pay due attention to the issue of materials embedded in foreign trade commodities. In this context, we examined the amounts of iron and aluminum embedded in Japanese foreign commodities. We chose the case of Japan because of this countrys substantial share in the trade of metals, as well as the ready availability of data and, in particular, an IO table.11) In conventional MFA studies,68,12) the trade flows of embedded substances or materials is investigated by multiplying the substance or material content of each commodity by the trade volume of the commodity. However, this method of estimation has two problems. First, the choice of commodities to consider depends on the MFA practitioners knowledge of which commodities contain the substance of interest. Second, it is difficult to determine the amounts of substances embedded in complex fabricated commodities such as automobiles and electrical and electronic equipment. To address these problems, Wang et al.6) explored 220 categories of iron-bearing products listed by UN Comtrade and used the iron contents of the commodities, as shown by the International Iron and Steel Institute. In principle, applying

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Wangs method to, for example, aluminum, copper, and nickel, requires information on the content of the substance in all commodities traded. Therefore, with this method, data availability is an important constraint. On the other hand, for the design of border tax adjustments, Izard et al.7) used an IO model to estimate the amounts of steel embedded in products. Their study discussed embedded material imports but did not discuss embedded substance imports. However, most materials, including steel, are used in the form of alloys rather than as pure metal; an example is SUS304 (a kind of stainless steel), which contains not only iron (7x%-Fe) but also 18%-Cr and 8%-Ni. Brunner and Rechberger13) emphasized the importance of determining flows of substances for resource, waste, and environmental management. Information on, for example, substances in scrap or waste, is crucial if the goal is to assign a waste stream to the best-suited recycling and/or waste treatment technology and to design waste recycling or waste treatment facilities. Moreover, for environmental management, it is important to determine the flows of potentially hazardous substances to the environment and to determine the fates of these substances in environmental compartments such as water bodies and soils. Here, we propose a method for identifying the flows of substances embedded in trade commodities, taking into consideration all commodities, including the substance of interest. The method employs the waste input-output material flow analysis (WIO-MFA) model1417) and statistical data on trade. As an empirical study, we used the method to quantify the flows of iron and aluminum embedded in Japans trade commodities in 2000. The WIO-MFA model is a top-down MFA method for estimating the material or substance composition of a product. Applied to the 2000 Japanese IO table,11) the model can provide the material or substance composition of about 300 commodities. It is important to note that the definition of material in the WIO-MFA model is fully consistent with those frequently used in MFA and includes substances (e.g., chemical substances such as Pb), alloyed or combined materials (e.g., steel or plastics), and products consisting of several materials (e.g., batteries, wire, and cables). 2. Methods and Data Identification of Substances Embedded in Exports to Particular Countries Here, we discuss the identification of substances embedded in exports to particular countries. Let there be m trading partners (countries) and n trade commodities for a particular country. The amount of substance e embedded in trade commodity i exported to country r, Xeri, can be written as Xeri = Teri Qri, where Qri is the amount of commodity i exported to country r in monetary terms, and Teri is the content of substance e embedded in commodity i exported to country r in terms of mass per monetary unit of the commodity. For a commodity with a low degree of fabrication, such as ores, it is straightforward to obtain the substance content (Teri) from the bottom up by using experimental data and product specifications. However, with an increase in the degree of fabrication (e.g. automobiles and electronics), establishing the content of a substance becomes more complicated. In addition, even for a given commodity, the sub1935

stance composition differs among different manufacturers. When the WIO-MFA is used, the first problem is addressed: the IO table distinguishes a number of commodities and services that practically encompass all of those being produced in an economy. The second problem is also addressed to the extent IO table, that gives the mean technical data for a country, thus enabling representative contents for various products to be established. In applying the WIO-MFA model, we used the Japanese IO table to define sets of resources, materials, and products in the terminology of the WIO-MFA. The set of resources consisted of iron ore only, because production of primary aluminum and import of bauxite for aluminum metal production is negligible in Japan. The set of materials to be considered consisted of pig iron, iron and steel scrap, aluminum, and aluminum scrap. The set of products consisted of about 300 commodities for which the degree of fabrication was higher than for materials. For a trade commodity i that is a material or resource, its iron and aluminum contents, Teri, are obtained from statistical reports and experimental data, as explained in the next subsection. On the other hand, for a trade commodity i that is a product, Teri is estimated by applying the WIO-MFA model. For example, the iron content of a passenger car is estimated from the sum of the iron content in each material and the material content of the passenger car. Thanks to a novel feature of the WIO-MFA framework, our method of estimating the iron and aluminum contents of trade commodities has two advantageous features. First, given a WIO-MFA database, all we need to collect are data on the iron and aluminum contents of materials and resources, and this makes the method and the estimations comprehensive and cost-efficient. Second, the WIO-MFA model provides not only estimates of the iron and aluminum contents of trade commodities but also a consistent structural understanding of the simultaneous flows of various substances. Data Compilation for an Empirical Study on Iron and Aluminum We estimated the exports of commodities from and to other countries in connection with Japanese commodity i, as follows. The year under study is 2000. Excluding the service sectors, 307 commodities are taken into consideration on the basis of the sector classification in the IO table for Japan. Although the total export of commodity i is described in the IO table for Japan, it is not broken down into countries of destination. Therefore, trade statistics for Japan18) were used to break down the trade volume into 230 countries and regions of destination encompassing Japanese trade. The country code is according to ISO 3166 notation for country code in this study. Because the commodity classifications based on HS (Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System) code in trade statistics and the classifications in the IO table differ, exports by country of destination in the trade statistics were matched to the 307 classifications of the IO table by using the table of corresponding HS codes, with 9 digits for trade statistics, that accompanies the IO table. It should be noted that the total export obtained
TS TS from the trade statistics, Qi = r =1 Qri , differs from the m IO total export tabulated in the IO table, Qi , for some commod-

2.2.

2.1.

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ities. Therefore, we first calculated the export share for each TS TS country on the basis of the trade statistics, as Sri = Qri / Qi , and we then estimated the export amount by multiplying the export share by the total export, as Qri = Sri QiIO , for each country and commodity. The iron content of iron ore concentrate was set at 59% in accordance with the data from interviews with steel company. For the supporting information of Fe content of crude ore, U.S. Geological Survey data19) also shows the average Fe content of usable ore produced in U.S, which is 62.9%. The iron content of pig iron was set at 94.5%.20) In addition, although iron and steel scrap contains alloying elements and impurities such as copper, we assumed that the iron and steel scrap was iron; that is, the iron content of iron and steel scrap was set at 100%. We assumed that the aluminum ingots were pure aluminum, and the aluminum content of aluminum scrap was taken to be 50%, from the lower limit in the standards for aluminum waste and scrap in the Monthly Reports on Supply and Demand of Non-Ferrous Metals.21) Substances embedded in imports were estimated in the same manner, assuming that the material compositions of imported products were the same as those of domestic products. We considered this assumption to be acceptable in light of a preceding study6) pointing out that only small amounts of fabricated commodities are imported into Japan. 3. Results 3.1. Flow or Iron Embedded in Japanese Trade Goods We estimated the total amount of iron embodied in Japanese exports in 2000 to be 43.5106 t. Figure 1 is a visual representation of the flows of iron (ore, materials, products, and scrap) embedded in Japanese exports by categorized commodities. Each circle denotes a nations capital. The flows consist of 0.5103 t of ore, 27.7106 t of materials, 12.9106 t of products, and 2.9106 t of scrap. All foreign countries and regions trading with Japan were considered, and the figure shows iron flows to various countries, including those in Africa and the Middle East, as well as to nearby Asia coun-

tries such as China, South Korea, and Thailand. The United States was Japans biggest export partner in 2000. Note that Panama is an FOC (flag of convenience) country and, in trade statistics, ships registered in Panama are considered to be ships exported to Panama.18) The Embassy of Japan in Panama reported that 70% of Japanese merchant shipping fleets were ships of Panamanian registry.22) Because of FOCs, it seems that the exports of products to Panama may look as big as those to the United States. Focusing on the major countries and regions receiving iron from Japan (Fig. 2(a)), the top five are South Korea (7.7106 t), the United States (6.0106 t), China (5.1106 t), Taiwan (3.2106 t), and Thailand (3106 t). The remaining 18.9106 t is distributed to other countries and regions. The iron is mainly embedded in materials and in products such as automobiles and precision equipment; the proportions of iron as materials and products differ among countries and regions. In terms of iron flows in Japanese imports, Australia, Brazil, India, the Philippines, and South Africa are the major countries supplying iron to Japan (Fig. 2(b)). (Note that the scales on horizontal axes of the two charts in Figure 2 are

Fig. 2.

Top five countries contributing to iron flows in Japanese imports and exports.

Fig. 1.

Flows of iron embedded in exports from Japan in 2000. Xeri shows the amount of substance e embedded in trade item i exported to country r.

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different.) The total amount of iron embedded in imports is estimated at 87.7106 t; 88.9% of this is in the form of iron ore. The relative contribution of countries other than the top five to iron flows is smaller than that in the export case; this implies the remarkable difference in the complexity of products between exporting and importing commodities. These results show the characteristic features of iron processing and trade in Japan. Specifically, iron ore imported from Australia and Brazil as a raw material is processed and exported to Asia as steel materials, to the United States as steel materials and automobiles, and to Panama as steel ships. Wang et al.6) shows net export of iron embedded in iron and steel material (13106 t) and that in high fabricated products (12106 t). Conversely, our study shows net export of iron embedded in iron and steel materials is 21.3106 t and that in high fabricated products is 9.6106 t, respectively. The difference of estimation amount of iron exports in high fabricated products is cause by the source of iron content of those products. However, based on the IO table and statistics by The Japan Iron and Steel Federation,23) it seems that Wangs estimation of exports of iron embedded in iron and steel material has underestimated. 3.2. Aluminum Flow Embedded in Japanese Trade The total amount of aluminum embedded in Japanese exports in 2000 was estimated at 1.66106 t. We examined the flows of aluminum embedded in exports in the four categories of commodities (Fig. 3). No aluminum was exported as ore, and the amounts exported as materials, products, and scrap were 0.67106 t, 0.97106 t, and 0.02106 t, respectively. The proportion exported as products (e.g. rolled products, automobiles) was higher than that for iron. This is because automobiles containing aluminum cast and die-cast products make up a high proportion of exports. By country and region, the export destinations for aluminum materials were Asian countries and the United States (Fig. 4(a)), whereas the main destinations for exports of products were the United States and Europe. The top five export flows were to the United States (0.45106 t), South Korea (0.21106 t), Taiwan (0.13106 t), China (0.12106 t), and Thailand (0.08106 t) (Fig. 4(a)). Aluminum flow to the

United States was mainly in the form of products, but flows to the other four countries were mainly as materials. In contrast, 3.62106 t of aluminum was embedded in imports (e.g. primary aluminum); this was equivalent to approximately 219% of the aluminum embedded in exports. More than 99.7% of the primary aluminum used in Japan is imported, and only one company provides primary aluminum by electrolysis from alumina (Al2O3). By country, the main sources of imports were the primary base-metal supplying countries such as Russia, Australia, and Brazil (Fig. 4(b)). These results show the structures of aluminum processing and trade in Japan. Specifically, primary aluminum that is imported from Russia and Australia as a raw material is processed and exported to Asia as rolled materials and to the United States as rolled materials and automobiles. 3.3. Application of the Model to Prioritization for Trade Flow Analysis Table 1 shows the proportions of iron embedded in exports from Japan: 63.7% of iron was exported as iron and steel materials; 29.7% was exported as iron embedded in products, and 6.7% in scrap (Table 1(a)). More than 54% of

Fig. 4.

Top five counties contributing to aluminum flows in Japanese imports and exports.

Fig. 3.

Flows of aluminum embedded in exports from Japan in 2000. Xeri shows the amount of substance e embedded in trade item i exported to country r.

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iron was exported as rolled steel materials, 5.9% was exported as passenger motor cars and 5.2% as steel ships. More than 60% of the iron was exported to Asian countries, and 15.5% was exported to North America. Korea (KOR), China (CHN), Taiwan (TPE), and Thailand (THA) accounted for 17.8%, 11.7%, 7.3%, and 7.0%, respectively. The United States accounted for 13.8% of iron embedded in exports. The top 10 of the 307 items in the IO table accounted for 77.4% of iron embedded in exports, and the top 10
Table 1. Proportions of iron embedded in exports from Japan, by commodity and country. (a) 4 commodity categories and 8 region categories Commodity category Share (%) Material 63.7 Asia North America Product 29.7 Middle and South America Western Europe Scrap 6.7 Middle East Oseania Ore < 0.1 Africa Central and East Europe, Russia etc. (b) 307 commodities and 230 countries and regions Row, Commodity Ordinary steel strip Coated steel Cold-finished steel Hot-rolled special steel Iron scrap Passenger motor cars Steel ships Steel pipes and tubes Other hot-rolled ordinary steel Ordinary steel sheets and plates Others (207 commodities) Share (%) 18.5 11.8 10.2 6.9 6.7 5.9 5.2 4.7 4.4 3.1 22.6 Column, Country Share (%) KOR USA CHN TPE THA HKG MAS PAN SIN INA Other countries (220 countries) 17.8 13.8 11.7 7.3 7.0 4.8 3.7 3.0 3.0 2.7 25.2 Region category Share (%) 63.5 15.5 7.1 7.0 3.1 1.8 1.6 0.4

of the 230 countries accounted for 74.8%. Table 2 shows the proportions of aluminum embedded in exports from Japan: 58.3% of aluminum was exported as aluminum embedded in products, and 40.7% was exported as aluminum materials. Not only aluminum embedded in rolled and drawn aluminum (17.9%), but also that in aluminum ingots (22.6%) was exported; 15.5%, 7.9%, and 5.3% of aluminum was exported in passenger motor cars, motor
Table 2. Proportions of aluminum embedded in exports from Japan, by commodity and country.

(a) 4 commodity categories and 8 region categories Commodity category Share (%) Product 58.3 Asia North America Material 40.7 Western Europe Middle and South America Scrap 1.0 Oseania Middle East Ore 0.0 Africa Central and East Europe, Russia etc.
(b) 307 commodities and 230 countries and regions Row, Commodity Aluminum Rolled and drawn aluminum Passenger motor cars Motor vehicle parts and accessories Internal combustion engines for motor vehicles and parts Two wheel motor vehicles Other electronic components Trucks, buses and other cars Semiconductor making equipment Electronic computing equipment (accessory equipment) Others (207 commodities) Share (%) 22.6 17.9 15.5 7.9 5.3 3.5 2.5 2.0 1.3 1.1 20.4 Column, Country Share (%) USA KOR TPE CHN THA MAS HKG GER SIN INA Other countries (220 countries) 27.1 12.9 7.9 7.3 4.8 3.6 3.2 2.8 2.7 2.6 25.1

Region category

Share (%) 47.9 28.8 13.6 3.1 2.6 2.2 1.3 0.5

Fig. 5.

Export structures of (a) iron and (b) aluminum; units: %. Each element refers to the share of the total export of iron or aluminum embedded in exports. Elements with shares larger than 0.7% are displayed as if the shares were equal to 0.7%.

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vehicle parts and accessories, and internal combustion engines for motor vehicles, respectively. More than 47% of aluminum was exported to Asian countries; 28.8% was exported to North America and 13.6% to Western Europe. The United States accounted for 27.1% of aluminum embedded in exports; Korea (KOR), Taiwan (TPE), China (CHN), and Thailand (THA) accounted for 12.9%, 7.9%, 7.3%, and 4.8%, respectively. The top 10 of the 307 items accounted for 79.6% of the aluminum embedded in exports, and the top 10 of the 230 countries accounted for 74.9%. We examined the export structures of iron (Fig. 5(a)) and aluminum (Fig. 5(b)), as represented by using 19-by-11 matrices which were selected from the original 307-by-230 matrices consisting of all the items and countries. The rows and columns are commodities and countries that appear in Tables 1 and 2. Each element represents the share of the total export of embedded iron or aluminum. Elements with shares larger than 0.7% are displayed as if the share is equal to 0.7%. Here, we focus on some points of commonality in the trade flows of iron and aluminum in this diagram. Specifically, the proportions of exports of these substances in rolled materials, automobiles, and motor vehicle components are high for Asian countries such as Korea (KOR), China (CHN), Taiwan (TPE), and Thailand (THA). However, the trends in iron are distinguished from those in aluminum by the finding that a large amount of iron is exported as steel ships. Development of an indicator quantifying similarities in the flows of such substances is a future task. 4. Discussion Estimating the amounts of substances embedded in imports and exports by multiplying the substance content in each item by the items trade volume has much in common with conventional estimating methods.68,12) However, our method and conventional methods differ greatly in terms of the following two points. First, it is difficult to define the substance content of highly fabricated items by using conventional estimating methods.6,8,12) In contrast, by using the WIO-MFA model, it is easily possible to estimate the substance contents of approximately 300 items categorized by the Japanese IO table, including items with a high degree of fabrication. Because the IO table also gives the volumes of imports and exports, this method is also very comprehensive, giving the WIOMFA model an advantage. Izard et al.7) used an IO model to analyze the steel embedded in imports, but they did not consider yield ratios in manufacturing processes, and this led to overestimation. Second, our method uses the sector classification according to the IO table. Therefore, one of its advantages is the ability to use a common sector classification to compare each of the substances in items that include products with high degrees of fabrication (Tables 1 and 2, Fig. 5). Finally, we would like to touch on the direction of our research in the future and summarize this paper. The method we describe above has the advantages of being simple and comprehensive while at the same time using a common sector classification. It should therefore be effective in selecting quantitatively important trading partners and items. The development of an indicator quantifying similarities among
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substances in terms of their flows, as described above, is one direction for the future of this research. Another direction is to use these methods to analyze trade flows that include secondary resources. Exports of used products were not targeted in this study. Trade data that distinguish new and used goods are hard to obtain. In addition, it is difficult to obtain data on the composition of used goods. To deal with this, Fuse et al.24) have proposed a method for estimating trade volume by country; this method divides new and used goods by using price information. In addition, incorporating a dynamic model that takes into consideration the dynamic material flows over time that emerge with the different phases of a products life cycle is important for analyzing the trade flows of used goods or end-oflife (EoL) products. Because the products of today are the waste materials of tomorrow, static MFAs of different time periods are related to one another by the generation of used products and EoL products and by the recovery and recycling of waste materials from these products.25) Acknowledgments This research was supported partly supported by the Mitsui and Co., Ltd. Environment Fund (Grant No. R07-194) and by JSPS (KAKENHI 22360387, KAKENHI 22360218).
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