Environmental assessment of electronic products using LCA and ecological footprint

The Ecological Footprint (EF) methodology, developed by Wackernagel and Rees, has often been suggested as a sustainability indicator for the human impact on earth. Efs, expressed as area, sum up the total productive area of land and water ecosystems required to sustain the resources, wastes, and emissions of a population wherever that land may be located. Thus, EFs can be established on a global or other geographic level. In this paper, we discuss whether the EF can be applied to electronic products. Based on a LCA study, we used a bottom-up approach for estimating the bioproductive space needed to appropriate the resources and emissions of a personal computer (PC). We also used area as a single indicator to make results comparable to the current terrestrial world-average footprint. Our estimates suggest that the EF of a PC is about 9 per cent of the terrestrial EF of a world-average citizen, which is probably underestimated. Although the results of this case study are a first approximation only, they indicate the magnitude of human appropriation of ecosystems by a single product.