Environmental self-assessment of consumptive behaviour.
As consumptive behaviour is a key to dematerialisation, the awareness of this fact by consumers is crucial, as it is necessary to have an idea of the environmental stress potential of specific consumption goods to be capable to personally evaluate the impacts of decisions.
Every human activity is embedded in a permanent exchange of material and energy ongoing in natural systems. Since the industrial revolution the human-induced use of matter and energy has been rising and with them all local and global environmental problems discussed in today’s environmental debates – such as climate change, loss of biodiversity, exploitation of clean water reserves and the like.
Therefore it is important to reduce the material and energy use.
Everybody can contribute to the reduction of both material and energy use. To do this in an efficient way, savings should take place where it really makes a difference and where they least affect our personal well-being. To reduce material inputs we need to look beyond the weight of the things we buy. These products cause the use of materials and energy during their production process and during the production of the products, machines etc. that were used to make them. This hidden use is called the “ecological rucksack”. In some cases this “rucksack” is much higher, but in other cases it is smaller than we would expect.
This questionnaire is organized in four areas: mobility, food, housing and life style. The first three areas are causing the largest part of all materials used. The category “”life style” is considered because of its symbolic function, which means, that we can derive more general consumption trends from looking at those products and services. At the same time their material consumption is often over-estimated.
http://www.umweltbildung.at/cgi-bin/cms/af.pl?contentid=1429
Contact
- Mark Hammer
Project partners
Project duration
- May 2002 – September 2002
