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The Takeda Award 2001 for World Environmental Well-Being is awarded to Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek and Ernst Ulrich von Weizsaecker for "The development and promotion of the Ecological Rucksacks and Material Input Per unit Service (MIPS) concepts, as measures of the ecological stress of products and services."
Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek presented the ecological rucksacks and MIPS concepts in 1993 as broad measures of environmental stress. Mankind has benefited enormously from nature during the progression to rich societies characterized by material wealth. At the same time, the pursuit of this type of prosperity has caused great destruction in the process of obtaining and using natural resources as in excavating, extracting natural resources, and channeling water from rivers and lakes for irrigation, among other activities. Schmidt-Bleek has proposed that such dislocation of natural materials is the fundamental cause of environmental damage. Therefore, all products and services used by people carry a "rucksack" of all the materials displaced or processed during the life-cycle of that product or service.
This creative concept was invented by Schmidt-Bleek and termed the "ecological rucksack." There is an Ecological Rucksack associated with each product that is calculated to indicate the weight of all materials displaced in the production of the good or service. Schmidt-Bleek developed a second indicator known as Material Input Per unit Service, or MIPS, which is the ratio of the ecological rucksack value per unit of service provided. MIPS reflects the "real" value of goods and services, and attempts to place these in the economic product function. By associating on MIPS value with each product, company, government, and individual, it becomes possible to take into account the environmental stress created by the production of these products.
Ernst Ulrich von Weizsaecker, who was president (1991-2000) of the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy, invited Schmidt-Bleek to the Institute to develop these concepts further. Following the collaboration between von Weizsaecker and Schmidt-Bleek, the ecological rucksacks and MIPS concepts were refined further to connect resource productivity with energy efficiency (mainly limited to the production process of raw materials), and clarifythe relationship between those concepts and toxicity or hazards.
Von Weizsaecker wrote a book, Factor 4, which introduced these important concepts globally. The Wuppertal Institute continues to make great efforts to disseminate these concepts and promote the collection of basic data with which to calculate MIPS in collaboration with Schmidt-Bleek.
As a result of this line of investigation, adverse environmental stresses can be reduced by designing MIPS to lower values, i.e. taking smaller ecological rucksack values or larger service values for each product. The values of ecological rucksack, and MIPS are simple measures indicated by weight, and, therefore, they have practical use in industrial fields.
Although MIPS is an approximate value, its use makes it possible to understand complex environmental stresses comprehensively. It is hoped that the use of MIPS will increase the awareness of the environmental stress of different products and services, and eventually intertwine the marketability of a product with its environmental stress. That is, the use of MIPS will influence economic activities by reflecting the true cost of goods and services, including the costs of environmental stress.
For these reasons, the development of the ecological rucksacks and MIPS measures represent an important milestone towards creating a sustainable society. The Takeda Foundation honors this achievement for its technological creativity and bestows upon this achievement the Takeda Award.
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