Raw Material Consumption Controls on Environment Impacts of Sofa Production: A Case Study Based on Ecological Footprint

Jianquan Li,Shuzheng Luo,Yue Yuan

doi:10.1051/wujns/2021266527

Abstract

Wooden furniture production consumes a lot of forest resource and other resources, so it is important to estimate its environmental effect. In this research, we collected data in a sofa factory of China and appraised its environment impacts by the ecological footprint (EF) methodology. The results showed that the total EF of the sofa factory was 2 316.25 gha/year (gha: global hectare). The average EF of a sofa was 0.18 gha/year. For the total EF of the sofa factory, main contribution came from wooden materials (55%), followed by non-wooden materials (41.26%), and these two categories contributed above 96% of the total EF. Human labor accounted for 2.21% of the total footprint. The built land and water contributed a little to the total EF. For the total EF of the wooden materials, main contribution came from wood beams (57.6%), followed by plywood (41.08%); and for the total EF of the non-wooden materials, main contribution came from sponge (95.37%). In the end, we concluded that the incorporate of recycled wooden material and reused sponge in the sofa production could be viewed as an important strategy to achieve more sustainable manufacturing.

Highlights

The notion of ecological footprint (EF) was introduced in 1996 by Rees and Wackernagel which was defined as the area of land hypothetically required to provide the resources and to absorb the waste generated by a human population[1]
The EF of the wooden raw material yielded a figure of 1 274.05 gha·year–1 based on the natural productivity of wood in the world of 1.29 m3·hm–2 according to the research of Li et al[35], The EF of the non-wooden raw materials reached to 955.51 gha·year–1
In the total EF of the sofa production, the main contribution came from wooden materials (55%), followed by non-wooden materials (41.26%), and these two categories contributed above 96% of the total EF

Summary

Introduction

The notion of ecological footprint (EF) was introduced in 1996 by Rees and Wackernagel which was defined as the area of land hypothetically required to provide the resources and to absorb the waste generated by a human population[1]. An appropriate definition of the EF for the corporate level is that it determines the space required to support an activity by means of the area needed to provide the resources consumed and to absorb the wastes generated[1,6,7]. It is estimated by converting all the material consumption and waste generated data of enterprises into the corresponding ecologically productive land area. Based on the basic principles of the EF, we can establish the accounting model for the EF calculation of an enterprise, which can quantitatively reveal the ecological needs of enterprises

Methods

Results

Conclusion