Life Cycle Assessment of consumption patterns – Understanding the links between changing social practices and environmental impacts

Abstract

As we are still not on track to achieve environmental sustainability through technological change, we need to further stress the importance of understanding routinized types of behaviour by private households and the environmental assessment of corresponding consumption of resources. Social practice theories allow us to understand the constitution of human activity and its embeddedness in society. In transformation research, the relevance of social practice theories has been recognized. However, there is still a lack of understanding regarding the conditions under which practices change substantially and what kinds of tools and governance approaches are suitable to foster change in social practices. We therefore propose a novel way to address the transformation of consumption patterns of private households by a) connecting social practice theories to life cycle assessment for a quantitative environmental evaluation of transformation processes and b) using narrative approaches to understand the links between several social practices and conditions for change. An illustrative study of a bottom-up neighbourhood initiative shows how specific meanings and values (expressed, for example, through meanings of “enough”) affect several social practices from different consumption categories (nutrition, daily mobility, travelling). Environmental assessments further show that changing social practices across consumption categories can substantially decrease environmental pressures from private household consumption, especially in the field of nutrition. The understanding of how various social practices are connected in a nexus through narratives embodying deeper meanings point to novel ways of fostering change and the relevance of social practices related to urban or neighbourhood initiatives as an entry point to a more sustainable way of living.