Spangenberg, J.H., Lorek, S. (2002)

Environmentally sustainable household consumption: from aggregate environmental pressures to priority fields of action

Ecological Economics, Vol. 43, No. 2-3, pp 127 - 140

Abstract

IThe objective of the paper is to identify those areas of consumption, in which private households can make significant contributions to environmental sustainability, and to present a transparent and comprehensive set of indicators for them. The analysis of the environmental impacts of households focuses on consumption clusters that permit to depict different life spheres of private households. Two criteria guided the investigation of the relevance of these clusters:

•The environmental significance of the consumption cluster in terms of resource consumption, and

•The potential influence of households as compared to other actors.

Resource consumption was chosen as simplified, but reliable representation of environmental pressure dynamics. Growing resource consumption goes together with growing environmental pressures and vice versa, although not necessarily proportionally. The key resources analysed are energy and material consumption, and land use. Based on this analysis, three consumption clusters were identified as priority fields for action by households: construction and housing, food/nutrition and transport (in this order). All other consumption clusters can be considered environmentally marginal, providing combined saving potentials of less than 10% of the total resource consumption.

Finally, from description of the respective roles of actors based on anecdotal evidence a semi-quantitative “actor matrix“ is presented indicating the relative influence of different actors per consumption cluster.