An environmental space based approach to assessing the environmental impact of household consumption

Unsustainable consumption and production patterns are one of the key driving forces behind the unsustainable development of the World. The environmental impact of household consumption is a matter of regular reporting, either based on an economywide analysis with households as a sector of final demand, or on household economics using consumption statistics. However, it can be shown that neither SNA based accounting nor household economics provide the proper instruments to assess the environmental impact of household decision making. An alternative way of assessing the contribution of households to the total environmental pressures is suggested. For this behalf, an alternative life cycle wide environmental impact assessment scheme is suggested covering the major pressures on the environment caused by household decision, except for toxicity related effects. It is based on the environmental space concept, measuring energy consumption, material flows and land use. For the latter, a simple but sufficient ordinal classification scheme is presented. Using the SNA approach, the main clusters of consumption can be identified, and when combined with the household focussed analysis their influence potentials can be assessed. The methodology is described in some detail and used to analyse the environmental relevance of the main clusters of household consumption. Other applications of the methodology are briefly discussed.