The Consumption Footprint as possible indicator for environmental impact evaluation at city level. The case study of Turin (Italy)

Abstract

Environmental assessment methods have increasingly been adopted to support local transitions toward sustainable urban development and Agenda 2030 implementation at the city level. However, available methods evaluating both direct and indirect (embodied) environmental impacts due to local consumption are still limited and lack a broad coverage of environmental issues. Adopting a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) perspective in current approaches may help to fill this gap. In this paper, we evaluated the environmental impacts associated to consumption patterns and intensities of the average Turin citizen (Italy) by implementing the LCA-based Consumption Footprint indicator, which assesses the impacts of five areas of consumption (food, mobility, housing, household goods, appliances) with the 16 impact categories of the Environmental Footprint method. Comparing Turin and EU consumption patterns, the average Turin citizen showed a larger impact on human toxicity (+30%) and a lower on ozone depletion (-21%) with housing, food, and mobility as main drivers. This represents a first attempt in assessing local consumption with full bottom-up LCA indicators. The Consumption Footprint allowed unveiling local consumption trends while connecting them to a global dimension of impacts (e.g., Planetary Boundaries). Main challenges include input data types (e.g., local consumption intensities) and coverage of consumer goods modelled via the proposed indicators.