  
How industrial activity affects the environment tends to be defined in "end-of-the-pipe" terms- pollution and waste. This report, however, provides a new and important perspective. It examines how natural resources are used to fuel industrial economies. The result of a unique collaboration among researchers in Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States, it reveals that nearly four=fifths of these vital "imputs" are hidden: they do not enter the economy and so are not measured directly. Moreover, much of the natural resource use needed to sustain a national industrial economy occurs outside of that country's borders. Only when cross-national material flowas are accounted for can the physical or environmental consequences of economic activity be gauged accurately.
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