Environmental impacts of Swiss consumption

What are the environmental impacts of Swiss production and consumption patterns? Answering this question was the main topic of a project we did on an environmental extended input-output analysis together with Rütter+Partner.

Methodology

Environmental impacts of a country can be analysed from the production or the consumption perspective. The production perspective analyses the environmental impacts within the national boundaries. The consumption perspective includes life-cycle thinking and looks on goods and services consumed within the national boundaries. Thus, impacts caused during the production of imported goods are included while these of exported goods are subtracted from the total balance.

This research project investigated for the first time the total environmental impacts due to Swiss consumption and production with the ecological scarcity method. About 60% of environmental impacts that are caused by final demand occur abroad as a result of imported goods and services. The most important area of consumption is nutrition that accounts for about 30% of total impacts, followed by housing and mobility of private households. Within this study, input-output analysis and environmental data are combined in order to get a true and fair view on total environmental impacts of consumption and production.

The first LCA of Switzerland environmental impact also formed the basis e.g. for different personal footprint calculators and for the assessment of reduction potentials.

Basic data and results of the analysis are published in the EcoSpold format and available for SimaPro and other formats (download).

Project results were presented at a Swiss LCA discussion forum (DF 45), 15. September 2011, Berne-Ittigen.

Commissioner: Swiss Federal Office for the Environment (FOEN)