Quantification of Goods Purchases and Waste Generation at the Level of Individual Households
Journal article, 2014

Quantifying differences in resource use and waste generation between individual households and exploring the reasons for the variations observed implies the need for disaggregated data on household activities and related physical flows. The collection of disaggregated data for water use, gas use, electricity use, and mobility has been reported in the literature and is normally achieved through sensors and computational algorithms. This study focuses on collecting disaggregated data for goods consumption and related waste generation at the level of individual households. To this end, two data collection approaches were devised and evaluated: (1) triangulating shopping receipt analysis and waste component analysis and (2) tracking goods consumption and waste generation using a smartphone. A case study on two households demonstrated that it is possible to collect quantitative data on goods consumption and related waste generation on a per unit basis for individual households. The study suggested that the type of data collected can be relevant in a number of different research contexts: eco-feedback; user-centered research; living-lab research; and life cycle impacts of household consumption. The approaches presented in this study are most applicable in the context of user-centered or living-lab research. For the other contexts, alternative data sources (e.g., retailers and producers) may be better suited to data collection on larger samples, though at a lesser level of detail, compared with the two data collection approaches devised and evaluated in this study.

goods purchases

disaggregation

industrial ecology

waste generation

case study

household metabolism

Author

Robin Harder

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Chemical Environmental Science

Yuliya Kalmykova

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Greg Morrison

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Fen Feng

Uppsala University

Mikael Mangold

Chalmers, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Water Environment Technology

Lisa Dahlén

Luleå University of Technology

Journal of Industrial Ecology

1088-1980 (ISSN) 1530-9290 (eISSN)

Vol. 18 2 227-241

Driving Forces

Sustainable development

Areas of Advance

Building Futures (2010-2018)

Subject Categories

Environmental Analysis and Construction Information Technology

DOI

10.1111/jiec.12111

More information

Latest update

5/14/2018