Global Environmental Impact of Dutch Private Consumption

Abstract

Worldwide ecosystems are under pressure of economic activities. The main impetus for this is human demand for food, other goods and services. How household spend their money is an important factor in the magnitude of the damage inflicted on the environment. The distribution of environmental damage among the different household expenditures can provide insight in how this damage can be reduced. On the issue of consumption related environmental impacts many studies have been performed. However, most of these studies only focus on a specific part of our consumption (e.g. assessments [LCAs] of goods and services), on a specific impact category (e.g. energy or greenhouse gases) or on consumption on an aggregated level (e.g. footprint assessments of nations or cities). A comprehensive assessment covering the whole of consumption, while allowing detailed insight into its composition, and taking many environmental impacts into account, has not yet been performed. As early as 1976, Herendeen and Tanaka (1976) published their ‘energy cost of living’, using input-output (IO) based energy intensities of household expenditures. Several studies in this field were performed, for example in Europe (e.g. Weber and Fahl 1993; Reinders et al. 2003), India (Pachauri et al. 2002) Australia (Lenzen 1998) and New Zealand (Peet et al. 1985). Besides energy, emissions have been analyzed in a similar fashion (e.g. Morioka and Yoshida 1995; Breuil 1992; Munksgaard 2000; Alfredsson 2002). Later on, as LCA data became available, IO based data were complemented with process-based data to allow hybrid analysis.