Consumption footprint (cei

The indicator is part of the Circular Economy indicator set. It is used to monitor progress towards a circular economy on the thematic area of 'Global sustainability and resilience'.

The Consumption Footprint addresses domestic and spill-over/transboundary environmental impacts through imported goods. Current trends of increasing consumption intensities and changes of patterns among areas of consumption result in an increasing EU consumption footprint. Circular economy strategies changing consumption patterns and the environmental profile of products might decrease EU’s consumption footprint.

4. Statistical Indicator

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4.1. Data description

The indicator consumption footprint estimates the environmental impacts of EU and Member States consumption by combining data on consumption intensity and environmental impacts of representative products.

The Consumption Footprint is a set of 16 LCA-based indicators (also available as a single score) whose purpose is to quantify the environmental impacts of consumption at EU and Member State level. It is based on the combination of: i) the emissions to air, soil and water as well as the resources used along the life cycle of circa 160 representative products, belonging to 5 areas of consumption (food, mobility, housing, household goods, and appliances); ii) the consumption intensities of those products; iii) the Environmental Footprint (EF) impact assessment method, which translates emissions and resource consumption into potential environmental impacts.

Per capita: reports the per capita total value in the metrics of the impact categories of the Environmental Footprint method.

Note that the single weighted score is calculated as the sum of the characterized value (absolute) of each impact category (i) divided by a normalization factor quantifying the global impact (Crenna et al., 2019) and multiplied by the EF weighting set (Sala et al., 2018).

Index (base = 2010): reports the Consumption Footprint compared to 2010 as reference year.

The index of a given impact category (i) for the respective year (j) is calculated as the relation between the absolute value for that year divided by the reference in 2010.

Planetary Boundaries: reports the number of times that the planetary boundary is transgressed for that impact category, country and year.

The planetary boundaries for a given impact category (i) for the respective year (j) is calculated as the relation between the absolute value for that year divided by the Planetary Boundary per capita (as in 2010) (Sala et al., 2020).

Regarding the single weighted score, a weighted average is performed to express the overall transgression of planetary boundaries using the EF weighting factors set.

4.2. Unit of measure

Times the planetary boundary
Index (2010=100%)
Per capita. The unit depends on the impact category. See full list below.

IMPACT CATEGORY	PER CAPITA UNIT
Acidification	mol H⁺ eq.
Climate change	tonnes CO₂ eq.
Ecotoxicity, freshwater	thousand CTUe
Eutrophication marine	kg N eq.
Eutrophication, freshwater	kg P eq.
Eutrophication, terrestrial	thousand mol N eq.
Human toxicity, cancer	micro CTUh
Human toxicity, non-cancer	micro CTUh
Ionising radiation	tonnes U-235 eq.
Land use	million Pt.
Ozone depletion	g CFC-11 eq.
Particulate matter	disease incidence (by 1000)
Photochemical ozone formation	kg NMVOC eq.
Resource use, fossils	gigajoule (GJ)
Resource use, minerals and metals	kg Sb eq.
Water use	thousand m³ water eq.
Single Weighted Score	nanopoints

4.3. Reference Period

Calendar year.

4.4. Accuracy - overall

Indicator from non-ESS source. For assessment of accuracy please refer to the original source (see link to external data source and metadata in "Annexes").

4.5. Source data

EC -Joint Research Center (JRC)

Note that Eurostat is not the producer of these data, only republishes them. These data are not considered European statistics.

Joint Research Centre. Consumption Footprint Platform.

Link to public dataset: https://eplca.jrc.ec.europa.eu/ConsumptionFootprintPlatform.html

5. Frequency and Timeliness of dissemination

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5.1. Frequency of dissemination

Every year

Indicator is updated every year.

5.2. Timeliness

> T+2 years