Different Lifestyles and Their Impact on the Environment

The transition to a sustainable society is happening too slowly. Although many changes have been introduced in public policies to ensure the greening of industry, these steps towards sustainability are insufficient unless individual households also contribute. This study tries to show that households have very different impacts on the environment. A difference in lifestyle, i.e. how we choose to live, be transported and choose our provisions, can have a dramatic impact on the environment. Based on life cycle assessment the environmental impacts from cradle to grave of different lifestyles have been calculated. The study shows that there are large differences among the analysed families. The ‘American lifestyle’ family, which is very dependent on transport by car, lives in its own large house and eats a lot of meat, pollutes eight times as much as the analysed ‘green’ family. The study thus demonstrates that it is necessary to influence lifestyles as a logical next step in the transition to a sustainable society. # 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. and ERP Environment Sustainable Development, Vol. 5, 30±35