Calculation

P1: Recycled/reused content of products = Sum for each product {(Weight of a product unit x Proportion of recycled content x Units produced)  + (Weight of a product unit x Proportion of reused content x Units produced)}  / Sum for each product (Weight of a product unit x Units produced)  x100

Unit of the indicator: percent

Why this indicator is important

Although the indicator recycled/reused content of materials (I3) tracks the materials consumed in the production stage, the need for these materials is driven by the product design. Incorporating a higher proportion of recycled/reused materials into the product will lower the demand for new materials.

This represents the average content of recycled, reused or remanufactured materials in all products produced over the reference year. It is preferable to estimate the recycled/reused materials in terms of weight for each product, then to add the weights of recycled/reused materials. This approach allows for combining different products with different recycled/reused proportions.

 

Interpretation

This indicator can range from zero to 100 percent depending on the nature of the products. While 100 percent will rarely be achievable, ongoing efforts could make incremental improvements over time.
Reviewing the detailed data will help identify products, and perhaps components of products, for which recycled and reused content could be increased.

Related issues

Not all input materials end up in products. For some industries, it requires 100 kilograms of raw materials to make one kilogram of product. Depending on the production process and the nature of the product, this indicator may be greatly different from the indicator of recycled/reused materials (I3).

This indicator does not take into account the effect of recycled/reused materials on the quality of the product. In some cases, increasing the recycled/reused content would increase the marketability of products and demand a higher price.

The current version of the Toolkit does not calculate the proportion of recycled/reused materials in the product directly from input materials.