Green Glossary: Material Input Per Unit of Service (MIPS)

MIPS is a widely used acronym but for our purposes, we're talking about material input per unit of service, a "unit of eco-efficiency that examines sustainability of production by breaking down products into services they provide and examining the amount of materials that needs to be displaced in order to provide a unit of service." For example, it's said that automobile factories don't make automobiles but "services of transportation." Thus, a car can be "broken down into the mileage it provides as services and that is evaluated against total material displacement in manufacturing, fueling, maintenance and waste disposal."

The MIPS concept was originally developed at the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment and Energy by a team led by Prof. Friedrich Schmidt-Bleek in 1993. Based in Wuppertal, Germany and founded by Professor Ernst Ulrich von Weizsäcker in 1991, the core research fields of the Institute's research groups are:

- Future Energy and Mobility Structures

- Energy, Transport and Climate Policy

- Material Flows and Resource Management

- Sustainable Production and Consumption

A more everyday angle on MIPS applies to backpack design.