“During the early COVID-19 period, we could witness lifestyle changes happening around us fast, so we decided to explore the environmental impacts of these lifestyle changes. Some other research at that period was showing that the production-side greenhouse gases emissions decreased, but when assessing the emissions from the consumer side we noticed that they did not change so much compared to 2015 through 2019 levels,” said Project Assistant Professor Yin Long from the University of Tokyo Institute for Future Initiatives. Long is first author of the research recently published in One Earth.
Experts say that around the world, half of a nation’s carbon footprint is due to the consumption of goods and services by individual households. A carbon footprint is a measure of both the direct and indirect greenhouse gases emissions associated with growing, manufacturing and transporting the food, goods, utilities and services we use.
Researchers considered in this study approximately 500 consumption items and then tracked the carbon emissions embedded in all the associated goods and services. Eating out, groceries, clothing, electronics, entertainment, gasoline for vehicles, as well as home utilities were all included.
“The real beauty of it is the consistency of the long-term data collection in these government statistics, even during the COVID-19 period, which allows us to compare it with historical patterns” said Associate Professor Alexandros Gasparatos, an expert on ecological economics who led the study. Gasparatos holds a dual appointment with the University of Tokyo and the United Nations University in Tokyo.