The 80:20 rule that makes or breaks the planet

Taking personal responsibility for ‘living lightly’ requires a clear head on priorities. The thought-provoking website run by Edwin Datschefski at www.biothinking.com has some ideas to offer. In a recent posting, Datschefski notes that just seven activities account for nearly all of the environmental impact of any one person’s consumer purchases, according to a six-year study by the Union of Concerned Scientists in the USA. Whereas "some consumer decisions, like whether to choose paper or plastic grocery bags, are insignificant", a consumer can have a big impact by making even a small change in one of the important areas, such as buying a car that does 30 miles per gallon instead of 20.

The UK National Consumers’ Council has similarly found that most of a consumer’s potential for environmental improvement lay in a small number of key issues - reducing the fuel consumption of cars by over 60%; doubling the energy efficiency of the housing stock; reducing the energy consumption of domestic appliances; and reducing water consumption in households.

That’s at home. Datschefski extends this line of thinking to encompass offices, where over half the UK workforce work. Offices, he says, "are also non-producing in the material sense and so can be regarded as consumers". Using environmental audit data from 12 offices, he finds that 80% of office impacts come from:

  • Business travel and commuting
  • Building energy
  • New build and refurbishment
  • Paper and print
  • PCs
  • Water
  • Waste
This means that only 20% of impacts arise from other areas, such as catering, electrical, lamps, batteries and other electronic waste, stationery and PC consumables, furniture and carpet, refrigerants, clothing, post and couriers. Datschefski draws the conclusion that these areas should not be ignored, but should command less attention than the 80% impact areas. Combining home and office consumption, he concludes that the vast bulk of impacts arise from building energy including electricity, transport, food, construction, waste and water - or, put another way, from shelter, mobility and food. By far the biggest difference a consumer can make is in the choice of their car, house and office building. Decisions about these happen only once every few years - so they are decisions with huge potential for "leverage". What’s also interesting is how little information there is on the full lifetime environmental performance of cars and buildings, and diets, and how tiny a factor it is in most people’s decisions on such things.

Biothinking, 020 7628 0992;  www.biothinking.com

18 October 2001