Evaluating Environmental Sustainability

The need to quantify sustainability is great, especially in a world in which scarce resources are in increasing demand and the effects of climate change become more apparent. Climate change will change our capacity to meet our demands for water.

Almost all economic activity causes some negative impacts of the environment, either directly or through goods and services that are bought in. Mitigation methods for reducing unwanted emissions can themselves create other negative environmental impacts as side effects. Accounting for all these effects requires a holistic approach, such as Environmental Life Cycle Assessment. This powerful method quantifies upstream and direct impacts on the environment in the production of specified goods or delivery of services. It includes the better known subset of the Product Carbon Footprint and the Water Footprint.