The application of LCA, LC thinking, industrial ecology and circular economy, EPDs and Environmental footprints has made available a great amount of data related to products from different sectors of agrifood industries or... [ view full abstract ]
The application of LCA, LC thinking, industrial ecology and circular economy, EPDs and Environmental footprints has made available a great amount of data related to products from different sectors of agrifood industries or from other industries that could help the decisions of individual consumers and public administrations.
Such situation is not yet sufficient for understanding the actual position in terms of environmental sustainability, as many indicators are relative and give relative understanding of the impacts due to an anthropogenic product system compared to another one.
The aim of the research is to give a contribute in modelling the human Carbon Footprint (CF) with reference to the global Earth carbon balance.
The contribution will consider how to model the dynamic flow of carbon (both biogenic and fossil) in a limited area of North-East Italy, how to model the yearly individual carbon footprint introducing the “Maximum allowable carbon footprint per capita” that could be used as normalization factor in a global scale contest.
The model considers the actual consumption of food and the waste production and for each stream assesses the Carbon content, similarly the goods consumption is based on actual incomes of the same region crossed with data of the local Chamber of Commerce.
The goods modelling will be based on the Input/output analysis. The resulting CF of the study will be compared with the Maximum allowable carbon footprint per capita” giving hits of how far (or not) we are from sustainability with the actual lifestyle (even if local) and suggestion to reduce the Carbon Footprint will be drawn.
Keywords: Absolut sustainability indicator, Substance flow Analysis, Carbon Footprint
1c. Assessing sustainability (indicators and reporting)
