Download Ecological Footprint of Pollutants Exploring a

How heavy is your house?
www.regionalsustainability.org
How heavy is your house?
We derived the average amount of number of materials (more precisely:
commodity categories, show table) that are required to
-maintain and repair a house
-build a new house
-build a new road
These numbers have been derived by combining material flow with IO
analysis. Basically, we have looked at the flows of materials associated with
(or ‘embodied’ in) certain economic activities. In this case the economic
activity is final demand of (or final expenditure on) constructing, maintaining
repairing houses/roads.
www.regionalsustainability.org
How large is your house?
42 hectares?
the total Ecological Footprint embodied in all the construction materials
required to build a typical house in the NW is 29 gha
- on top of that come another 13 gha per house which are due to the activities
of actually assembling all these materials into a proper house. This Footprint is
derived from the final expenditure on the sector 'construction', i.e. the
companies, the construction workers etc. (more precisely capital investment in
dwellings).
- i.e. 42 gha to built a new house, to be spread over the lifetime of the house.
www.regionalsustainability.org
Your house and the environment
Show Efs per material per house
-then CO2, GHG
-then other pollutants
Technical note: These numbers include all upstream
environmental impacts in this category (I.e. EF numbers
include all upstream Footprints). This means that for ‘wood’
it is not only the land area to grow the timber but also the
impact of cutting, sawing, transporting the timber.
Show and discuss relative intensities of these impacts.
Check out:
energy intensive products (glass, ceramic, cement) should
stand out in terms of energy requirements!?
www.regionalsustainability.org