Lifecycle Economic And Environmental

Performance Of Product Systems

ME-516

Environmental evaluation of different

leisures

EPFL students:
Madeleine Ruiz Høyer Supervised by:
Charlie Wickham Damien Friot
Sodelwyn Yit

September 16, 2018

Contents
Abstract 1

1 Context 1

2 Objectives of the study and recipients 1

3 Function, Functional Unit, Reference flows 1

3.1 Function 1
3.2 Functional Unit 1
3.3 Reference flows 1
3.3.1 Paper Book 1
3.3.2 E-reader 2
3.3.3 Streaming 2
3.3.4 DVD 2
3.3.5 Cinema 2
3.3.6 Verbier 2

4 Key parameters 3
4.1 Climate Change 3
4.2 Ecosystem Quality 3

5 System and system boundaries 4

6 Evaluation of the impacts caused by the key parameters 4

6.1 Paper book 4
6.2 E-reader 6
6.3 DVD 8
6.4 Streaming 8
6.5 Cinema 9
6.6 Verbier 11

7 Discussion 12

8 Conclusion 16

9 Appendix 17

References 19

1
 Abstract
This paper analysis the environmental impacts caused by various forms of leisure performed by
one person, namely: reading a paper book, using an e-Reader, streaming, watching a DVD,
going to the cinema and finally spending a whole day skiing in Verbier. All of these activities
are to take place in Switzerland and are intended to last a whole day consisting of eight hours.
A programme called Quantis is used to collect the values and analyse the results. The indicators
"Impact on Climate Change" and the "Impact on Ecological Quality" allow us to evaluate the
outcome and to classify the impact of each individual activity. The analysis involves comparing
the various phases of the product’s lifetime and also looking into the components that cause
the greatest impacts. It can be concluded that the most environmentally friendly activity is
streaming while the activity causing the most harm to the environment is going skiing a whole
day in Verbier. It is assumed that the buildings and the infrastructure exist already and they are
therefore not included in the calculations. Furthermore, all of the materials used are incinerated
rather than recycled.
ME-516 Lifecycle Economic And Environmental Performance Of Product Systems
Spring 2018

1 Context
This paper wishes to compare the environmental impacts when deciding for various forms of
leisure in Switzerland during one day of eight hours.

2 Objectives of the study and recipients

We shall compare the environmental impacts of the following activities :

• Reading a book in paper format versus using an E-Reader.

• Streaming a film versus watching a DVD versus going to the cinema.
• Skiing a day in Verbier, including transportation to get to the resort.

The production, use phase and end-of-life are considered. Comparisons will be conducted
between similar cases, and amongst all activities.

3 Function, Functional Unit, Reference flows

3.1 Function

The primary function is to provide entertainment for someone living in Lausanne.

3.2 Functional Unit

The mentioned activities will last a whole day and it is assumed that this will equal to
eight hours. The study will focus on impacts caused by one person living in Switzerland. It is
therefore assumed that the production of both the required equipment and energy, and all the
other components in the supply chain will take place in the same country.

3.3 Reference flows

3.3.1 Paper Book

Since it takes two minutes to read one page, it is assumed that 240 A5 pages will be read.
There are 35g of ink per 1000 pages. As a consequence, it can be considered that 300 g of paper
and 10g of ink are used during the eight hours. A major book printing company is situated in
the vicinity of Lucerne and it is therefore estimated that the distribution is 150km.

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3.3.2 E-reader

It is assumed that the lifetime of an E-reader is ten years, which corresponds to 87600 hours.
Therefore, 8/87600 of an E-reader is used during one day. Approximately 6700 MJ is used over
the entire lifetime. We also assume that a distribution company is based Bern, therefore we
assume that the transport distance is 100km.

3.3.3 Streaming

To achieve the streaming we require a computer. A computer’s lifetime is 50 000 hours.

Therefore, a day’s worth of the computer is 8/50000 [4]. The energy consumption of a computer
is 12 W, therefore the total electricity usage during the day is 96 Wh. According to an article,
Netflix’s total annual electricity footprint is 140 000 MWh and they state that their users collec-
tively watch 1 billion hours of content per week [10]. Combining these two pieces of information
it is concluded that Netflix uses 0.02154 kWh of energy to stream to a single customer for eight
hours.

3.3.4 DVD

We require a television and it is assumed that the lifetime is 80 000 hours, hence for the day
8/80000 is used [3]. The DVD player has a lifetime of 500 hours, hence 8/500 of the player is
used. Finally, eight hours of watching films corresponds to approximately five DVD’s and each
DVD is watched five times before it is thrown. We also assume a television of 17 inch LCD is
used.

3.3.5 Cinema

There are 50 people on average in the cinema watching the projection, whereas 300 people
will be in the building and be affected by the ventilation. For example, the power input of a
large lecture theater is 50kWh/m2/year so for this purpose it is 10400 W. The consumption is
divided by the 50 people that are present during eight hours. The projector’s lifetime is 20000
hours, hence during the eight hours this corresponds to 8/20000.
We assume the cinema is at a local distance of a maximum 15 km. We consider both methods
of transport to the cinema. The trains and metro will be used by the majority of the people,
and a small proportion are drivers.

3.3.6 Verbier

The ski equipment includes a pair of skis, two poles, boots and a helmet. Following the "100
day rule" stating that the equipment has a lifetime of 100 days indicates that using it one day
corresponds to 0.01 of its entire lifetime. The ski lift consumes 0.05 kWh per person per day,
assuming that 2400 visit the ski resort in a day. If a person is skiing in Verbier it is estimated

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that ten ski lifts are running. Hence, the total electricity consumption for ski lifts are 0.5 kW
[11]. The average person will visit buildings at the resort with about 2000 m2 [5] of heated space
in total shared by around 100 people. The total energy consumption for heating the buildings is
nearly 25 kWh.
It is assumed that the skiers access the resort by either using the train or by using a private
car. It is estimated that about 50% use the rail and 50% use the road. The total distance covered
is 100 km.

4 Key parameters
Lifecycle Impact Assessment is an important phase of Lifecycle Analysis. An impact assess-
ment helps determine emissions and resource consumption data associated with the product’s
lifecycle through different types of inventory results (elementary flows and other interventions).
This includes terms of the environmental strain, human health and resources. The database
in Quantis considers several categories such as ozone layer depletion, photochemical oxidation,
aquatic ecotoxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, aquatic eutrophication, water turbines, global warm-
ing, non-renewable energy consumption, water consumption, land occupation, and many others
[6].
All parameters are related to the area of protection of human health, ecosystem quality,
climate change, water withdrawal and resources. These five areas of protection are expressed
respectively in DALY, PDF·m2 ·y, kg CO2 -eq, m3 and MJ. For the purpose of this study, only
the Impact of Ecosystem Quality and Climate change are considered.

4.1 Climate Change

Climate change involves a number of environmental mechanisms that affect Human Health
and Natural Environment. Climate change models are developed to assess the future impact on
climate from different policy scenarios[7]. The climate change indicator measures the impact on
climate change from greenhouse has emissions associated with a product, plant or organization.
The impact unit is expressed in kg CO2 -eq.

4.2 Ecosystem Quality

Ecosystem quality measures the potential impact on ecosystems and the effects on biodiversity,
species and their inhabitant caused by emissions or resource use associated with the products,
process or organization. It factors the aquatic and terrestrial ecotoxicity, water turbined and land
occupation[6] . It characterizes the fraction of species that disappear on a 1 m2 surface within a
year. The unit of measurements is expressed as PDF·m2 ·y which is the potentially disappeared
fraction of species over m2 during the year.

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5 System and system boundaries

As previously mentioned, the study will only involve activities in Switzerland. Furthermore,
energy and equipment is produced in the country and therefore the shipping distances remain
minimal. We have considered the construction of primary materials. For example, when con-
sidering paper we assume that all environmental impacts prior to this stage, such as growing
and cutting trees and the pulp production, have been included in the raw material paper. In-
frastructure, such as construction, is assumed to be already existing and it has been ignored
throughout the whole study. Finally, in order to simplify the evaluation of the environmental
impacts we have only included electricity taken from the socket in the consumer’s wall. The
electricity production and the different possible electricity mixes have not been discussed.
The paper compares all the phases of a product: production and distribution - known as
beginning of life (BOL), use phase - middle of life (MOL) and finally the waste management
- end of life (EOL). The overall values obtained for the whole lifetime will be divided by their
respective scaling factors.
As a side note, we do not include reuse and recycling of items. One reason for this is that all
material is sent to an incineration plant. However, it would be interesting to analyse this aspect
in future studies.

6 Evaluation of the impacts caused by the key parame-

ters

6.1 Paper book

When looking at figure 1 below, it is clear that purchased material will have the greatest
influence on all the environmental indicators (the orange segments). For the Impact on Ecosystem
Quality this is 0.408 PDF·m2 ·y (97.6%) and it is 0.307 kg CO2 -eq (95.2%) for Impact on Climate
Change. In addition to Purchased materials, we need to consider distribution and EOL. However,
when comparing these two to each other there is no general rule of thumb where we can predict
that one will be worse than the other. This will depend on the individual indicators. For both
Impact on Climate Change and Impact on Ecosystem Quality the EOL is more important than
distribution. Although EOL is slightly greater for the Impact on Climate Change. When looking
at the Impact on Human health EOL will be the main contributor between distribution and EOL,
whereas for water turbined distribution is the worse influencer.

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Figure 1: Graph representing the different contributors to the environmental indicators where
it is clear that purchased materials have the greatest influence.

Purchased materials is clearly the most dominant factor with 0.398 PDF·m2 ·y and 0.292 kg
CO2 -eq. It is interesting to see which materials are major contributors to this.

Figure 2: The plot illustrates which Purchased materials have the greatest Impact on
Ecosystem Quality and Climate Change.

From figure 2 we see that the orange segment corresponding to Paper & Board has by far
the greatest negative impact on both the Ecosystem and the Climate change with 85.3% and
88.1%, respectively. The orange segments correspond to the paper used for the pages while the
other Paper & Board corresponds to the thicker paper cover. This is represented by the green
segment. Clearly, the value is so much higher for the sheets of paper simply due to the fact that
there is so much more of it. The chemical in question is the ink used for printing. The mass of
ink corresponds to approximately 3.3% of the total mass of the book. However, when carefully

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observing the plot it equals to approximately 13.6% of the Impact on the Ecosystem Quality.
This indicates that the chemicals are proportionately more harmful for the environment than
the paper which is used.

6.2 E-reader

The Impact on Ecosystem Quality is 0.054 PDF·m2 ·y and the Impact on Climate Change is
0.222 kg CO2 -eq. It is interesting to note that the Distribution phase and the Use phase stand
out as having the greatest impact on the environment, and this is a general trend that can be
observed for all the six environmental indicators. In this particular paper there is an emphasis
on the Impact on Ecosystem Quality and the Impact on Climate Change, and we shall continue
to focus on these two aspects.
For the Impact on Ecosystem the Distribution equals to 0.038 PDF·m2 ·y (70.6%) and the
Use phase is 0.016 kg CO2 -eq (29.1%). Whereas for the Climate Change indicator, Distribution
corresponds to 0.202 PDF·m2 ·y (91.1%) and the Use is 0.020 kg CO2 -eq (8.9%). Although it
is challenging to decipher, the phase with the third greatest environmental impact is Purchased
materials. This corresponds to only 0.2% for the Ecosystem Quality and 0.02% for the Climate
Change.

Figure 3: The plot illustrates which phases of the E-reader will have the greatest impact on the
environment throughout its whole lifetime.

When specifically analyzing these two phases in figure 4 in further detail it is concluded that
the high value for Distribution is entirely caused by the building that is used as a warehouse
to store the produced E-readers. One of our main assumptions in the whole study is that
infrastructure is not accounted for. Therefore, the impact from the building is solely due to
the heating and humidity control. Furthermore, electricity is the only element that influences
the Use phase. Clearly, this corresponds to the electricity drawn by the E-reader from the wall
during charging.

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After having looked at the two different possibilities in reading a book, paper version and
electronically, it is concluded that using an e-reader is better for the environment.

Figure 4: Comparing the environmental impacts of reading a book in either paper format or by
using an E-reader.

Below we can observe the breakdown between the greatest contributors of the environmental
impacts. For the book, we can notice a correlation between figure 5 and figure 6 where Purchased
materials is definitely the greatest cause of the Impacts for both the Ecosystem Quality and the
Climate Change. For the E-reader it can be noticed that, although the Distribution phase is the
greatest cause of environmental impacts, it is more significant for the Climate Change than for
the Ecosystem Quality.

Figure 5: Comparing the Impacts of

Ecosystem Quality of reading a book in Figure 6: Comparing the Impacts of
either paper format or by using an Climate change of reading a book in either
E-reader. paper format or by using an E-reader.

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6.3 DVD

The Purchased materials for TV impacts the most in Ecosystem Quality at 0.0217 PDF·m2 ·y
(48.5%), the Purchased materials for the DVD player comes second at 0.00787 PDF·m2 ·y (17.6%).
The use of the DVD player is 0.00739 PDF·m2 ·y (16.5%), the remaining category, End of life and
Distribution accounted for a combined 0.00775 PDF·m2 ·y (17.5%) as well. Within the purchased
material for TV, the biggest impact was due to the Electronics. The TV used is assumed to be
a 17 inch LCD monitor which considers different components such as auxiliaries, emissions, and
waste.
The Impact of Climate Change was mostly affected by the Purchase of materials, specifically
DVD and the EOL of DVD at 0.317 kg CO2 -eq (47.4%) and 0.228 kg CO2 -eq (34%) respectively.
The purchase materials for TV and the player is about 0.0446 kg CO2 -eq (6.5%) each, and the
EOL of TV and player being cumulatively about 0.0220 kg CO2 -eq (3.3%), which is a small
impact. The purchase materials for DVD is due to the plastics for the casing and the disc itself,
which has a huge toll on the environment.

Figure 7: Comparison of the Impacts on Ecosystem Quality and Climate Change

6.4 Streaming

When streaming a movie online, the things taken into consideration is the Energy consumed
by the servers by the host such as Netflix, and the energy consumer uses such as the power of a
television. In the chart below, the Impact on both Ecosystem Quality and Climate change was
heavily influenced by the Television, at 0.0300 PDF·m2 ·y (73.5%) and 0.0448 kg CO2 -eq (74.7%)

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respectively. The main components of a television is the reason behind the elevated percentage.
The television parameters within Ecosystem Quality is due to the electronics at 60.2%, where
39.5% was contributed by the metals such as Aluminum and Copper. The electronics includes
the LCD and the cables used within the television. The electricity is dominated by the energy
by the consumer. Netflix’s servers has been known to be extremely efficient over within a course
of a year, therefore when taking the proportion of a day’s use, is very little when compared to
the User’s electricity [10].
As mentioned previously, the Television impacts mostly the Climate Change. Within the
television, the electronics components in the television accounts for 75.6%, metals at 13% and
plastics at 10%.

Figure 8: Comparison of the Impacts on Ecosystem Quality and Climate Change

6.5 Cinema

The impact of spending a day at the cinema are primarily divided near evenly among the
production of the movie projector , the power consumed during a showing, and the effect of transit
by the individual and employees (0.453 PDF·m2 ·y and 0.999 kg CO2 -eq in total). However, the
effects of running HVAC (Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning) and EOL disposal are also
seen summing to around 10%. The largest impact on Ecosystem Quality is the power consumed
by the projector and sound system, totaling 34% of the total impact. For Climate Change, the
largest impact becomes the production of the cinema projector contributing 54% of the total.
The majority of this impact is due to the aluminium components of the large projector. In both
indicators, a similar portion around 33% is contributed by the user’s transportation to and from
the theater.

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Figure 9: The distribution of each life Figure 10: The Lifecycle Phase impact
phase’s effect within each indicator for the distribution for Ecosystem Quality (Left)
equivalent of eight hours of operation of a and Climate Change (Right) for a Movie
Movie Theater. Theater’s daily operation.

In the following figure, we compare the Ecosystem Quality and Climate Change impacts
between our movie-watching options: DVD, Cinema, and Streaming. In both cases, Streaming
has the least impact and the Movie Theater is the most having over 10x the impact in both
indicators. The primary difference between the two can be accredited to the general trend of
per-lifetime impacts such as BOL and EOL, versus per-use impacts in the Use Phase. The
requirement of personal transport, air conditioning, and electrical consumption by the Movie
theater case on every use means that those impacts are not diluted with time as the same
actions during production would be. Both Streaming and watching a DVD only require electrical
consumption during their use, resulting in greatly reduced impacts on Ecosystem Quality and
Climate Change.

Figure 11: Comparing the impacts on Ecosystem Quality and Climate Change between the
three movie-watching options: DVD, Cinema, and Streaming.

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6.6 Verbier

The impact of a day of skiing at Verbier is dominated by Transportation to and from the
resort, and the Resort’s daily consumption. The total impact is 7.11 PDF·m2 ·y and 23.7 kg
CO2 -eq.

Figure 12: The impacts of a day of skiing at Verbier.

Transportation’s impact totals 4.75 PDF·m2 ·y and 20.5kg CO2 -eq, 67% and 87% respectively.
It can be seen in figure 13 that a much larger portion of this impact is due to petrol car trans-
portation, rather than by rail, where both represent the same unit of distance. This impact
could be reduced to 1.25 PDF·m2 ·y and 1.43 kg CO2 -eq by traveling exclusively by rail in both
directions.
Verbier’s resort impacts total 2.33 PDF·m2 ·y (32.8%) and 2.92 kg CO2 -eq (12.3%). Less than
2% of this impact is due to the energy consumption of the Chair Lifts on the mountain. The
rest comes from the Heating required for the buildings on the mountain. Being large spaces in a
consistently cold climate, the energy required to keep them warm at all times is noticeable.

Figure 13: Breakdown of impacts by 100 Figure 14: Breakdown of impacts by

Pkm by Swiss rail and by car. Heating and Chair Lifts at Verbier.

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When compared to the other activities, there is an obvious fundamental difference in scale
between the impacts of Verbier and the others. This comparison shows how long distance travel
and space heating have huge effects on environmental impact.

Figure 15: A comparison of the total impacts of all activities on Ecosystem Quality and
Climate Change.

7 Discussion
1. What is the best activity from an environmental point of view and why?

When deciding for which of the six activities is the best for the environment we consider both
the Impact on Ecosystem Quality and the Impact on Climate Change. For both cases, streaming
comes out as being the most environmentally friendly activity. However, this clear dominance
is more obvious in the Impact on Climate Change rather than Impact on Ecosystem Quality.
For Climate Change, it corresponds to 0.231% and it is followed by e-Reader which is 0.854%
then DVD with 2.57%. Although streaming remains the best for Impact on Ecosystem Quality
with 0.505% it is tightly followed by DVD with 0.551% and e-Reader with 0.665%. A 100%
corresponds to all the environmental impacts for a specific indicator caused by all the activities
collectively and this can be observed in figure 16.
The primary reason for this trend is the lack of consumed resources and conversely prevalence
of long lasting components in the activity. The infrastructure for streaming and watching con-
tent lasts many years and uses very efficient electricity during its use. More quickly disposed of
objects such as DVDs and Books, and less efficient energy use such as personal transport and
heating leave great environmental impacts.

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Figure 16: The plot illustrates which of six activities is the best from an environmental
perspective. It can be concluded that streaming is the best for both environmental indicators.

2. How important is the use phase compared to the production phase?

As observed in figure 17, streaming is composed of three categories, energy use, EOL and
television. The energy used is a combination of the electricity used by Netflix and the electricity
consumed by the user. This can be considered as the Middle of Life (MOL). For the television
we include electronics, different metals and plastic. Therefore, it can be assumed that this cor-
responds to the production phase, also known as the Beginning of Life (BOL). In conclusion, we
can observe that the television has the greatest impact on the environment and as a consequence
we can state that the production phase is significantly more important.

Figure 17: The graph shows which components and phases of streaming have the greatest
impact on environment.

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3. What production step is inducing the most impacts and why?

To be able to answer this question we must combine our interpretations of figure 8 together
with our knowledge from question 2. When comparing the three phases, BOL, MOL and EOL, it
is safe to say that the BOL is still the greatest cause of the environmental impacts. It corresponds
to 73.4% of the Impact on Ecosystem Quality and 74.8% of the Impact on Climate Change. It
is interesting to note that the EOL for streaming has a negligible impact on the environment;
0.05% of the Impact on Ecosystem Quality and 2.55% of the Impact on Climate Change. One
possible reason is that streaming involves using only one relatively small tangible product in the
use phase - a television. As a result, the consequence of the EOL when incinerating the television
has a minimal impact on the environment compared to the impacts that have occurred during
the BOL and MOL. The BOL is greater than the MOL because more resources are needed when
producing the television than what is required for the electricity usage during streaming.

4. What is the influence of seasonality when considering the impacts each of the activities
have on the environment? Both in terms of weather and temperatures, and holidays?

Seasonality will affect the six activities differently. It is likely that Verbier is the activity that
will be affected the most, while for books the difference in seasonality may not be affected to
the same extent. Let us first analyse the case for Verbier. The data used in Quantis assumes
that Verbier is experiencing its best case scenario. That is, perfect snow, ideal temperatures and
conditions such that it is not necessary for them to use additional energy on producing artificial
snow. Simultaneously, they are not required to do additional snow ploughing to eliminate excess
snow. With a poor snowfall, the need for additional snow would be inevitable and Verbier’s en-
ergy consumption would increase drastically. Furthermore, the seasonality will also influence how
much heating is required in the buildings. Another aspect of seasonality occurs when analysing
the number of visitors at the resort. The footprints for individual skiers will vary according to
how many people share the installations. The footprints for each individual will be significantly
larger on an off-peak day given that the resort is still in full operation.
A similar comparison can be drawn when looking at the cinema. The environmental impact
per person decreases as you have an increasing number of people present watching the film.
Moreover, whether it is winter or summer will also influence how much energy is needed for
heating, ventilation and air-conditioning. Certain activities, such as the E-reader or streaming,
are very dependent on electricity during their Use phase. Depending on the electricity source the
seasonality may affect the activities differently. For example, Hydro power, one of Switzerland’s
primary domestic energy sources, come from dams higher up in the mountains. They may be
affected during a very cold winter as the water would freeze. As a consequence, an alternative
energy source would have to be found and it is likely that it is not as clean as Hydro power.
Furthermore, if these sources need to be imported from another country farther away then these
impacts could be even greater. However, this would depend greatly on how efficient the power
grid is and how many losses can be expected when transporting energy over greater distances.
Clearly, a non-renewable or less efficient energy source would increase the user’s footprint when
consuming the electricity to charge their televisions, e-Reader or computers. Finally, books would
be affected by the seasonality when looking at the energy required in the BOL. This is because
a relatively large amount of energy goes to the heating, cooling and humidity control of the

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building during the distribution phase. Therefore, depending on the season these values would
vary.

5. What are the key behaviours that reduce the environmental impact of a day of leisure overall?

Through all the activities, the factors that have the largest environmental impact are trans-
portation, space heating, and production. Key behaviors are those that will reduce or eliminate
the need for these uses; Here are some suggestions:
1) Avoid transportation: Buy locally and participate in activities within a walkable distance.
If you must travel, use a national Rail system rather than a personal vehicle to greatly reduce
environmental impact.
2) Moderate HVAC: Only use heating and air conditioning when necessary and in places with
an efficient amount of area per person.
3) Buy long lasting products: The longer a product is used, the less its production impacts the
environment. Invest in permanent installations and sell used items as functional or scrap to
further extend their lifespan past its intended function.

These behaviors will help reduce the environmental impact of leisure as well as your passive
day to day life.

6. Do you think the impact indicators considered are sufficient to take into account all the
environmental impacts of a day of leisure? What is missing?

The two impact indicators of Ecosystem Quality and Climate change does not consider suffi-
cient parameters to consider all the environmental impacts. The term environmental impact is
a broad topic which has many components that make up an environment. The Climate Change
considers mostly the emissions of greenhouse gases, and Ecosystem Quality measures the poten-
tial impact on ecosystems and the effects on biodiversity, species and their inhabitants caused
by the emissions. This may be the aquatic or terrestrial ecotoxicity, or the water turbined.
There are still other factors missing as indicated by the four other indicators that Quantis
measures which are Resources, Human Health, Water Withdrawal, and Water Turbined. Water
withdrawal takes into account water without turbined water, such as drinking water, irrigation
water, fresh and sea water. The Resource indicator is very important because it is fundamentally
required for any leisure activity. It factors in non-renewable energy and mineral extraction. The
type of resources required for leisure activity is important to know as resources on earth is finite.
Extracting minerals has been known to be very energy intensive and requires a lot of water as
resources [12].
7. Are your conclusions also valid for someone living in Germany?
When comparing the conclusions for Switzerland with other countries, one major factor would
be to look into the electricity production. How much the consequences of the electricity pro-
duction will influence the overall results will depend on the different activities analysed. The
majority of Switzerland’s domestic energy production is renewable and it comes from Hydro

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power and biomass [9]. At first this electricity may appear relatively clean, however this domes-
tic energy production accounts for only 15% of the country’s overall energy consumption. In
fact, the remaining 85% is imported and it derives from fossil fuels and nuclear.
The electricity sector in Germany is composed of 53% fossil, 17% nuclear and 30% renewable
energy sources[8]. The country is the largest exporter of electricity and they have grid intercon-
nections with neighbouring countries, such as Switzerland. With 42% of their energy generation
coming from Lignite, also known as Brown coal, and Hard Coal, Germany remains one of the
world’s largest power producers from coal.
In conclusion, we can deduce that the majority of the electricity consumed in Switzerland
is far from clean and renewable. Since on average Germany’s electricity is composed of 30%
renewable energy, in comparison to the 15% renewable energy in Switzerland, we can assume
that using the electricity in Germany is more environmentally friendly than consuming electricity
in Switzerland. How this will influence the validity of the final conclusions will depend on how
much electricity contributed to the overall environmental impacts.
As it has been previously mentioned, how much the consequences of the electricity production
will influence the original conclusions will depend on the different activities and where in Ger-
many the people would live. An example is skiing. Since the country is so much larger, it is likely
that a German would have to travel a lot further to get to a ski resort. Also, instead of taking
a train or driving 100km they would have to drive significantly farther or even fly. Clearly, this
added transportation would make the impact of skiing in Germany greater on the environment.

8 Conclusion
There are a near infinite number of ways to spend a day of leisure, and there are many ways
people make the decision of what to do. These often include cost, time, and expected enter-
tainment. We offer a new consideration based on Life Cycle Assessment, LCA, by performing
an analysis on six potential leisure activities: reading a paper book, reading on an E-reader,
watching a DVD at home, streaming a movie on a laptop, going to a movie theater, and skiing at
Verbier. Each of these activities satisfies the same function of providing 8 hours of entertainment.
By breaking down each activity into environmental factors, and assigning reference flows to
each, we create a level frame of reference to accurately compare the environmental impacts of
each activity to each other. From this, we analyze quantitatively based on Impact on Ecosystem
Quality (PDF·m2 ·yr) and on Impact on Climate Change (kg CO2 -eq).
Our analysis shows that streaming a movie has the least environmental impact with 0.054
PDF·m2 ·yr and 0.222 kg CO2 -eq, and skiing at Verbier has the most with 7.11 PDF·m2 ·yr and
23.7 kg CO2 -eq. The most prominent contributors to environmental impact were transportation,
space heating, and production.
LCA analysis is heavily reliant on appropriate assumptions in order to ensure an accurate
comparison between any practices with the same function. We believe that this paper provides
a baseline that can be applied to an infinite number of circumstances allowing people, from
engineers to consumers, a new tool for decision-making at any scale.

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9 Appendix

Table 1: Impact on Ecosystem quality and Climate Change on various leisure activities

Table 2: Impact on Ecosystem quality and Climate Change on Book

Table 3: Impact on Ecosystem quality and Climate Change on e-Book

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Table 4: Impact on Ecosystem quality and Climate Change on DVD

Table 5: Impact on Ecosystem quality and Climate Change on Streaming

Table 6: Impact on Ecosystem quality and Climate Change on Cinema

Table 7: Impact on Ecosystem quality and Climate Change on Verbier

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Spring 2018

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73343016502. [Accessed 28 May 2018]

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