To achieve more than incremental reductions in resource consumption and waste, it will be necessary to develop new approaches to the systematic use and re-use of materials in the kind of system termed an "industrial ecology". This paper presents a new methodology-CHAin Management of Materials and Products (CHAMP)-developed for modelling the flow of materials through a succession of uses with different performance requirements. Although developed specifically for polymers, the CHAMP approach is also applicable to other materials and products. Materials are characterised by a set of technical performance parameters, termed utilities. Geographical location is also treated as a utility to enable logistics-both distribution of products and collection of used products or waste-to be incorporated within the same modelling framework. Processing, transport and use are treated as activities through which a material can pass. The costs and environmental impacts of activities are included in the modelling framework, and are assessed on a life cycle basis by considering the complete supply chain of materials and energy used by each activity. The methodology includes acceptance criteria which determine whether a material is suitable for specific uses or activities. These criteria are applied within the model to guide selection of materials for specific applications and of successive uses for specific materials. A simple example of the CHAMP approach is given, to illustrate the kinds of problem to which it has been applied.