[burch45]

I have never heard of “material footprint” and from the definition it seems entirely worthless. The article doesn’t start with any reason why anyone would be interested in this measure, just that comment it is starting to show up in reports.

[strken]

I would have assumed it would be relevant to supply chains. I too do not understand its relevance to consumption. It seems like you could substantially increase your material footprint by digging two holes and swapping the soil, which is a little silly.

That being said, GDP is also a silly measure: I pay you a billion dollars to slap yourself, you pay me a billion dollars to stomp on my own foot, and we've just raised GDP by $2bn. Despite its ridiculous nature, in practice it seems to correlate with the things we do care about.

[gruez]

>That being said, GDP is also a silly measure: I pay you a billion dollars to slap yourself, you pay me a billion dollars to stomp on my own foot, and we've just raised GDP by $2bn.

In practice no because it won't be picked up by government statisticians for being obviously bogus.