Abstract
The paper suggests a sustainable material footprint of eight tons, per person, in a year as a resource cap target for household consumption in Finland. This means an 80% (factor 5) reduction from the present Finnish average. The material footprint is used as a synonym to the Total Material Requirement (TMR) calculated for products and activities. The paper suggests how to allocate the sustainable material footprint to different consumption components on the basis of earlier household studies, as well as other studies, on the material intensity of products, services, and infrastructures. It analyzes requirements, opportunities, and challenges for future developments in technology and lifestyle, also taking into account that future lifestyles are supposed to show a high degree of diversity. The targets and approaches are discussed for the consumption components of nutrition, housing, household goods, mobility, leisure activities, and other purposes. The paper states that a sustainable level of natural resource use by households is achievable and it can be roughly allocated to different consumption components in order to illustrate the need for a change in lifestyles. While the absolute material footprint of all the consumption components will have to decrease, the relative share of nutrition, the most basic human need, in the total material footprint is expected to rise, whereas much smaller shares than at present are proposed for housing and especially mobility. For reducing material resource use to the sustainable level suggested, both social innovations, and technological developments are required.
Highlights
An increasing number of consumers, especially in Western societies, can be characterized by a medium or high resource consumption profile
This section first gives a suggestion on the sustainable level of material footprint for household consumption and one example on how to allocate it to the different consumption components
In order to make this amount of resource use operationable, it has to be allocated to the different consumption components
Summary
An increasing number of consumers, especially in Western societies, can be characterized by a medium or high resource consumption profile. Since these lifestyles are becoming more popular in growing cities worldwide, resource efficiency is an issue of increasing importance on different levels. The use of natural resources by human activities has been constantly growing during the recent decades. From 1980 to 2008, for example, the extraction and use of many raw materials on a global scale has grown by tens or hundreds of percent. Since 2000, the global resource extraction has risen further and with a stronger growth rate than in the previous decade [1].
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