CITRIS Research Exchange - Driving Sustainable Consumption through Environmental Accounting of Retail Goods and Services

Life-cycle assessment is a powerful framework for total economic, social, and environmental cost pricing of consumer goods and services. We have developed a model to assess the cradle-to-consumer environmental impacts from the manufacturing, transport and trade of 1,100 categories of consumer products and services. Particularly promising opportunities exist to provide environmental information for products and the point of sale. At a cost of carbon of $10/tCO2, we estimate that incorporating the cost of carbon would only add about 0.5% to price of goods and services, and 0.7% to the price of food. By creating appropriate incentives for sustainable consumption as well as production, a more efficient and sustainable resource pricing system can begin to emerge that explicitly recognizes the connections between consumer behavior and global warming.