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Why an Integrated Approach to Production and Consumption Is Needed
In recent years, it has become increasingly clear that sustainable economies must be built around sustainable products and services, not just sustainable industrial processes. Production-oriented strategies can effectively reduce the environmental impacts associated with the design and manufacture of products and the consumption of materials and resources in the production process. However, by their nature, they do not address the increasingly significant environmental impacts associated with the selection, use, and disposal of products by non-manufacturing consumers. Indeed, changes in societal consumption patterns (e.g., population growth, an increasing standard of living, individual desires to consume products and services) have offset the environmental gains that have been achieved through programs aimed at making production processes cleaner and more efficient.
It is common to think of production and consumption as discrete stages in a product’s life cycle chain, with production (an industrial activity) preceding consumption (a domestic activity). But production and consumption are inextricably interwoven. All production consumes resources and energy: to produce something requires that something must be consumed. Each node in a product chain is both a production and a consumption node. There is no one, single determining node that can be labeled as the point of consumption or production.
In order to work toward environmental, economic, and social sustainability, we must approach consumption and production as a single integrated system focused on products and services. In this system, products and services serve as the natural nexus between production and consumption — the production of products and services requires that they be consumed, and the consumption of products and services requires that they be produced. A systems approach allows us to explore comprehensive strategies to address the sustainability of products and services at all stages of their life cycle.
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