Water footprinting has emerged as an important approach to assess water use related effects from consumption of goods and services. Assessment methods are proposed by two different communities, the Water Footprint Network (WFN) and the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) community. The proposed methods are broadly similar and encompass both the computation of water use and its impacts, but differ in communication of a water footprint result.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe mass of material consumed by a population has become a useful proxy for measuring environmental pressure. The "raw material equivalents" (RME) metric of material consumption addresses the issue of including the full supply chain (including imports) when calculating national or product level material impacts. The RME calculation suffers from data availability, however, as quantitative data on production practices along the full supply chain (in different regions) is required.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurrently, the European economy is using nearly three times the ecological assets that are locally available. This situation cannot be sustained indefinitely. Tools are needed that can help reverse the unsustainable trend.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA nation's consumption of goods and services causes various environmental pressures all over the world due to international trade. We use a multiregional input-output model to assess three kinds of environmental footprints for the member states of the European Union. Footprints are indicators that take the consumer responsibility approach to account for the total direct and indirect effects of a product or consumption activity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThis article presents the concept, calculation method, and first results of the "Raw Material Consumption" (RMC) economy-wide material flow indicator for the European Union (EU). The RMC measures the final domestic consumption of products in terms of raw material equivalents (RME), i.e.
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