Anthropogenic metabolism

"Anthropogenic metabolism" is a term used in material flow analysis, substance flow analysis and waste management. It includes:

"not only the physiological metabolism but also includes the thousands of goods and substances necessary to sustain modern life. Anthropogenic stands for man-made. The anthroposphere is the sphere in which human activities take place, sometimes called technosphere or biosphere. Today, the most important man-made material flows are due to activities such as cleaning, transporting, residing and communicating. These activities were of little metabolic significance in prehistoric times."^[1]

See also

• Industrial metabolism

References

1. ^ Brunner Paul H. and Rechberger H. (2002) Anthropogenic Metabolism and Environmental Legacies in Encyclopedia of Global Environmental Change (ISBN 0-471-97796-9)

Further reading

• Baccini, Peter and Brunner, Paul H., Metabolism of the Anthroposphere, Springer, 1991, Heidelberg, Berlin, New York, (ISBN 978-3-540-53778-6). New edition autumn 2011, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, ISBN 978-0-262-01665-0.