Andreas Niederl • Roman Mesicek
www.umweltoekonomie.at/mfa/en

Material flows created by societal activities are growing with negative consequences on the natural environment that cannot even be foreseen. Therefore it is important to decrease the absolute amount of environmental consumption. Private consumptive behavior is responsible for a considerable share of overall environmental consumption, so a way to reverse the current trend is a change in private consumption patterns. An important precondition for such a change is problem awareness.

Offering online information can contribute to such awareness. Therefore an online questionnaire has been developed identifying direct and indirect resource consumption. The questionnaire allows the user to spot the material flows caused by the consumptive behavior in areas identified as priority fields of relevance and inspires to rethink current practices. Material flow analysis (MFA) serves as the methodological basis and material intensity per unit of service (MIPS) as the respective indicator. The consumption clusters with the highest relevance are those which are environmentally significant and can also be influenced by the individual. The four consumption clusters that are covered in this questionnaire are trnsport, food, construction & housing and lifestyle.