Determining the absolute sustainability of products with case studies on laundry and food production

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Authors

James Sherwood 

Abstract

In this work, a new metric called ‘Service-weighted Product Level Absolute Sustainability’ is proposed as a numerical indicator to determine if a product is sustainable. The service offered by a product was found to be crucial to normalize its environmental impact and permit comparisons between products. Service-weighted Product Level Absolute Sustainability is demonstrated here with examples of water use for laundry and food production. The maximum justifiable environmental impact of these products has been calculated based on their performance, i.e., the quantity of clothes washed or nutritional content. Now the environmental impact of products can be rationalized as either sustainable or unsustainable, informing sustainable choices by manufacturers as well as consumers.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.31223/X5HG8X

Subjects

Agriculture, Earth Sciences

Keywords

Water, Environmental impact, Indicator

Dates

Published: 2021-06-22 11:38

License

CC BY Attribution 4.0 International

Additional Metadata

Conflict of interest statement:
None.