My Ecological Backpack Calculator

The ecological backpack visualizes the weight of all natural raw materials that are needed for our private consumption behavior. This includes all products and their production, use and disposal. For traveling by car for example not only the car itself and the fuel is considered but also the iron ore mine, the steel production factory, and the street infrastructure. The overall amount of raw materials can be used to estimate the pressure on the environment. Not only the extraction of raw materials itself has an impact, but the materials will also go back into the environment as waste eventually. The less natural resources we need, the lower will also be our impact on the environment. At first, questions on crucial private consumption patterns and household activities have been collected to be able to conduct holistic assessments. Clusters on consumptions have been defined (housing, consumer goods, nutrition, leisure, mobility and vacation) and then, these questions and their possible answers were connected to life ccle wide resource data, which include whole value chains (LCA). Electricity mixes for various European countries and world regions have been implemented in order to consider one's locataion within the calculation. Every completed questionary is submitted to a database of our own to analyse user behaviour. The questionaries are ending with socio-demographic questions (age, sex, education, invome) which helps to connect personal lifestyles and resource consumption with specific groups of people. Users of the calculator might gain an improved understanding and awareness of the interdependency of their consumption and environmental pressures. Tips for a more sustainable lifestyle are provided. For our research, we collect data sets for private consumption of people from different backgrounds (country, sex, age, income). Already 30.000 data sets have been uploaded until the end of 2016. These data can be used for further research on SCP.