www.regionalsustainability.org

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!?