Material input per service unit
“Material input per unit of service (MIPS) is an economic concept, originally developed at the w:Wuppertal Institute, Germany in the 1990s. The MIPS concept can be used to measure eco-efficiency of a product or service and applied in all scales from a single product to complex systems. The calculation takes into account materials required to produce a product or service.”
The people who developed the MIPS were of the opinion that materials displacement and usage were of more importance than the energy being consumed to produce a service unit.
See also
- w:Embodied energy is the sum of all the energy required to produce any goods or services, considered as if that energy was incorporated or 'embodied' in the product itself. The concept can be useful in determining the effectiveness of energy-producing or energy-saving devices