2.83/2.813 Class Project Spring 2007 Feb 9, 2007 2.83/2.813 Class Project –Spring 2007 Life Style Analysis In this project we will work together as a class team to analyze the environmental profile of some of the many possible life styles of a person in the United States. Examples could be a rock star, CEO of a Fortune 500 company, entrepreneur, college student, college professor, President of the United States, Buddhist monk, farmer, homeless person, environmental consultant, soccer mom and so forth. Each one of you will be required to pick a life style and to identify the components of that life style that affect the environment. This may require some interviews or research to validate the life style profile. To help you with this, you will be asked to analyze your own life style keeping a diary of different purchases and use of services throughout a sufficiently long period of time that you become familiar with your interaction with the environment. To help you with this we will have “area experts” for each of the areas listed below. These eight areas comprise the major ways in which an individual interacts with the environment. The graduate students in the class will become the area experts. In some cases we may have two grad students per area. 1. Diet. There are a number of issues here, how many calories are consumed, where does the food come from, is it organic or conventional, is the person a vegetarian or carnivore. We have to look at land use, fertilizer use, pesticides use, irrigation and so forth. Do they compost their waste food products or throw them away? 2. Clothing. Does this person wear cotton clothing, polyester, …do they repair or replace it, are they fashion conscious and have a large wardrobe or do they wear the same thing every day, do they wash and dry their clothes using hot water or cold water, are the clothes ironed, dry cleaned, line dried, etc. Are the used clothes recycled or thrown away? 3. Travel. Here all categories of travel will be included, land, sea and air with special emphasis on automobiles and air travel particularly charter air travel as well as other modes such as bicycling and walking. Are carbon offsets used? 4. Housing. Here major components are heating, and air conditioning, where the house is located and the climate there, is the house large, small, new or old, repairs etc. Heating and cooling practices are particularly relevant. What fuels are used? 5. Electronics and Computing. The growing number of electrical products used in the United States now represent a significant portion of our energy use. Many of these products consume energy even in the sleep mode so that they are ready for use when you want them. We will provide you with a meter so that you can go to your home or the homes of others to measure these devices. We are particularly interested in getting data on plasma televisions.2.83/2.813 Class Project Spring 2007 Feb 9, 2007 6. Household Appliances. This includes the refrigerators, washers, dryers, freezers, hot water heaters, toaster oven, fans, coffee maker, lighting and so forth. The same measurement device used above can be applied here for electric devices. 7. Services and Infrastructure. There are a variety of services that people use, which have an environmental impact associated with them. This includes such things as insurance, investments, legal services, education etc. In addition people use roadways, public facilities, water, sewage, utilities etc. 8. Entertainment and Personal Care. What forms of entertainment does this life style engage in and what are the environmental impacts associated with it? Is the person a hiker, snowmobiler, a skier, a motorboat racer etc? Methodology 1. Life Style Characterization. You will need to characterize a life style in terms of the eight critical areas outlined above. This may require an interview or review of the literature. For example, the economics literature has information about how people spend their income. Two references are “What We Work for Now: Changing Household Consumption Patterns in the 20th Century” by Jerome Segal, Cynthia Pansing and Brian Parkinson, December 2001, available at www.redefiningprogress.org. Another similar reference is “Consumption, Sustainable Welfare and Human Needs – With Reference to U.K. Expenditure Patterns between 1954 and 1994” by Tim Jackson and Nic Marks, Journal of Ecological Economics, 1992, Vol. 28, pp. 421-441. You will become an expert in defining life style characteristics by keeping a diary which notes quantities and costs of goods and services you use listed in items 8 above. 2. Impact Estimation. This may seem like an enormous task but we have two important software programs available to us that would help. 1) you will use the Ecological Footprint calculator, and 2) you will use the CMU EIO/LCA software. This does calculations in terms of expenditure. Therefore, one way of characterizing a life style is by expenditures in the different categories listed above. The output of this model will allow you to characterize the environmental profile in terms of four impact categories: 1) air pollution, 2) green house gases, 3) energy, and 4) toxic releases. These four different impact categories then will be plotted versus income, and versus the Ecological Footprint in individual plots for the total class. More detailed assessments of the life style of your individual will be made available by additional information provided by the area experts in two areas, carbon and energy. These are particularly important for the use phase of the products which are not covered in the CMU EIO/LCA software. As an example, consider a person who drives 12,000 miles a year in a car that gets 22 miles to2.83/2.813 Class Project Spring 2007 Feb 9, 2007 a gallon. The CMU EIO/LCA software will provide you with the environmental impacts associated with the manufacturing of the car, the production of the gasoline and oil, and the production of any spare parts required for the maintenance and repair of the car during its life time. These impacts have to be amortized over the life of the vehicle. However, they do not include the impacts associated with the burning of gasoline, which produces most of the CO2, for an automobile. This is where your area expert will provide you with guidance. Many of these type of problems will be reviewed in class in our lecture