After industrial society: Service society as clean society? Environmental consequences of increasing service interaction

Whereas industrial society is known to be to a great extent responsible for the degradation of the environment, service society is assumed to be rather 'clean'. There has, in fact, been a substantial reduction in material metabolism in industrial production in the developed countries. The increasing interaction intensity however, which is characteristic for a service society results in massive transport volumes and thus in other negative environmental impacts which to a large degree offset the advances in industrial production.