Figure 4: Consumer Ecosystems Toxicity Index

Figure 1: Consumer Environmental Index, Washington State

Figure 2: Consumer Climate Change Index

Figure 3: Consumer Human Toxicity Index

Figures:  
• Figure 4: Consumer Ecosystems Toxicity Index  – 
• Figure 1: Consumer Environmental Index, Washington State  – 
• Figure 2: Consumer Climate Change Index  – 
• Figure 3: Consumer Human Toxicity Index

Data Discussion

The Indicator Defined

The CEI tracks the environmental impacts from: • What consumers buy and how their purchasing patterns are changing. • Growth in average consumer spending. • Growth in the number of consumers. • Changes in the efficiency with which manufacturers convert energy and material resources into products and services so as to reduce the pollution output for any given product or service. • Changes in the efficiency with which consumers use commodities such as electricity and motor vehicles. • Changes in how consumers manage products at their end of life.

Data Interpretation/Evaluation

Washington consumers have increased their total environmental impacts by 24% since 2000. (Figure 1) On a per capita basis consumption impacts have gone up 17%, mainly due to the 3.8% annual growth in per capita real income from 2000 to 2005. Income growth explains more of the upsurge because population growth in Washington has only averaged 1.2% annually during the 2000-2005 period. It is no surprise that more people, each spending more money, has a deleterious environmental impact unless spending patterns change radically enough to offset the impacts of both income and population growth.

CEI would have declined by nearly 3% over the six year period if both population and per capita spending (in constant dollars) had not increased. That is, Washington consumers apparently are shifting the composition of their purchases in an environmentally friendly direction. For example, the quantity of gasoline and motor oil consumed in 2005 is below the 2002 peak for both.

Of the three components of the overall CEI, the climate change impacts of Washington consumers show the most progress. As indicated by the Consumer Climate Change Index graph in Figure 2, on a constant real spending basis the greenhouse impacts of consumer expenditures, use and disposal of goods and services declined by 9% between 2000 and 2005. Furthermore, GHG impacts on a constant real spending basis did not trend up in 2001 and 2002 as they did in the overall CEI. On the other hand, the Climate Change Index did grow in total by over 16% and per capita by 10%.

Figure 3 shows the Consumer Human Toxicity Index over the period 2000 through 2005. Even on a per real dollar spent basis, human health impacts of Washington consumers rose by over 1%. This suggests that the shift away from purchases of GHG generating products such as gasoline and motor oil toward more climate friendly goods and services, has not been accompanied by a shift away from products and services that have the potential to harm public health.

In total, the Consumer Human Toxicity Index went up 30%, and 23% on a per capita basis. These are the largest increases among the three components of the overall CEI, just nosing out the increases in the Consumer Ecosystems Toxicity Index.

In terms of the three components of the human toxicity index – criteria air pollutants, toxics and carcinogens, it is the carcinogens that are amplifying the negative results for human health. The carcinogens component increased by 38% in total, 30% per capita, and 7% on a constant real spending basis. The criteria air pollutant and toxics components, by contrast, declined between 1% and 2% by 2005 on the constant real spending basis.

Figure 4 shows the three trends for ecosystems toxicity from Washington consumption. Here as with human toxicity, the constant spending index at first trended up. On a constant real spending basis the Consumer Ecosystems Toxicity Index then turned down, but rose again in 2005 to end at 101.4.  In total and per capita, the Consumer Ecosystems Toxicity Index went up 30% and 22.5%, respectively.

Data Source and Limitations

The data and data discussion are excerpted from the report, The Washington State Consumer Environmental Index, by Sound Resource Management for the Washington State Department of Ecology. 

To measure the total amount and composition of annual expenditures by Washington’s consumers, the CEI relies on consumer expenditures estimates from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey.  

The CEI uses publicly available data to estimate pollution from resource extraction, manufacturing, and transportation and handling through a product’s supply chain to the point of retail sale. These data are from the Economic Input-Output Life Cycle Assessment (EIO-LCA) model (http://www.eiolca.net) maintained by the Green Design Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. This life cycle analysis model uses economic input-output tables to measure pollutant emissions from the total supply chain used in the production phase (often termed the “upstream” phase) for each product.

For additional information on the construction of the CEI and data limitations refer to the referenced report. 

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