LCA and carbon footprint for hobbies and traveling
There are several possibilities to spend one's holidays or leisure time. Travelling and exploring new cultures or landscapes is one thing many people like. The annual holidays can be spent out in nature far away from home or in a luxurious hotel nearby. But, also for leisure activities there are several options like a day skiing or in the zoo, visiting a cinema or a museum. Many people recognize the environmental importance of travelling from one place to the other by different means of transportation. But, tourism is more than this. It also involves the accommodation as well as the activities with which one spends the day.
This is the starting point for some of our projects, where we investigate several issues related to tourism from cradle to grave in life cycle assessment studies. These investigations involve, for example:
- Different scenarios for reaching the final destination by bike, car, train or bus
- Different types of accommodation ranging from camping places, rented homes, mobile homes, mountain huts to five star hotels
- All types of activities one can do, such as diving, sailing, skiing, cruises, mobile homes or visiting zoos, cinemas, indoor pools, museums or theatres
- Other issues related to the holidays such as the food preparation and consumption
Our investigations show that often the distance and mode of transportation is important for the environmental impacts caused. But, there are also activities like cruises or heli-skiing that can lead to considerable higher environmental impacts than other types of holiday activities.
We can help to better understand and reduce the environmental impacts of companies in the tourism sector (e.g. a hotel owner or the operator of a skiing resort) with our studies. We help consumers and organisations to plan environmental friendly holidays which give the satisfaction of discovering something new without harming the environment too much. Finally, we can also offer a range of life cycle inventory data that allow calculating environmental impacts such as the carbon footprint of leisure activities.
Publications and projects
Büsser S., Stucki M., Jungbluth N. Environmental Impacts of Holiday and Leisure Activities. Poster 17th SETAC case studies symposium, 28.2.-1.3.2011 in Budapest
Research study by Büsser & Jungbluth "Umweltbelastungen verschiedener Ferienszenarien im In- und Ausland (Environmental impacts of holiday scenarios in Switzerland and abroad)" commissioned by WWF Switzerland in 2010.
Project "Carbon footprint of Swiss mountain railways and skiing" 2010
Perch-Nielsen S., Sesartic, A. & Stucki M. (2010) The greenhouse gas intensity of the tourism sector: The case of Switzerland. In: Environmental Science & Policy, 13, pp. 131-140.
Sesartic A. & Stucki M. (2007) How Climate Efficient Is Tourism in Switzerland? An Assessment of Tourism's Carbon Dioxide Emissions in Relation to Its Added Value. ETH, Zürich.
