Abstract
Interventions targeted at district-level are a potentially effective way to reduce consumption-based urban impacts; however, a systematic method for accounting these impacts at district scale has not yet been developed. This article outlines a method for transforming household expenditure data into consumption quantified on a physical basis. Data sources are combined to calculate monetary value per unit mass for different products consumed by households. Socio-economic household archetypes are selected, and typical consumption for these archetypes is calculated by combining expenditure data from a household budget survey with the calculated monetary values per unit mass. The resulting physical quantities of different products consumed are envisaged as an essential part of performing district scale material flow analysis and urban metabolism studies, also as an input for assessing consumption-based environmental impacts and for designing sustainable consumption policies. The method was applied to characterise consumption in urban districts. The obtained results were used to assess of districts’ consumption-based impacts with life cycle assessment (LCA) and to inform design of sharing economy. The method was found to be an effective way to evaluate the demand for products in different districts; this in turn could inform objective measures to aid more sustainable urban consumption.
Highlights
From a life cycle perspective, it has been acknowledged that household consumption represents over three fifths of the environmental impact of total consumption and contributes the largest proportion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities [1,2]
The method proposed in this paper offers a simple way for local policy-makers to be able to assess the impacts of household consumption within a specific area
Existing methods for evaluating household consumption do not address consumption at district level, even though this resolution has been identified as having potential for positive environmental impact through targeted localised schemes [2]
Summary
From a life cycle perspective, it has been acknowledged that household consumption represents over three fifths of the environmental impact of total consumption and contributes the largest proportion of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from human activities [1,2]. There is evident need for efforts to reduce the environmental impacts of household consumption, as the growing human population increasingly shifts towards living in urban areas and adopting more consumerist lifestyles. A number of methods have been used to investigate household consumption at urban scale. By supplementing the collated data with spatial detail derived from local land-use maps, pollution inventories and business registers, they were able to produce results comparable to having using life cycle analysis (LCA). In this case, industry and business transaction data from multiple sources was combined in spatial MRIO to characterise factors such as water use and GHG emissions at city level. One family archetype was made for each city, giving limited insight into household consumption as differences between households within the same city were not considered
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