The sustainability of the future world depends on human beings' sound environmental stewardship - providing a quality of life for prospective nine billion people without depleting natural resources or causing irreparable harm to natural systems. One of the outcomes of the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg in 2002 was the call to promote and develop a 10-year Framework of Programmes on Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) in support of regional and national initiatives to accelerate the shift towards SCP. Research and development on environment-related issues including life cycle assessment (LCA) were performed toward “sustainable production” aiming reduction of environmental burden from industries. However, efforts to realize “sustainable society” by implementing sustainable consumption -- shifting on-going consumption patterns to a sustainable mode -- are also important. In Europe, networks have been established among the researchers on SCP, and the development of research framework is being discussed. Research efforts focused on sustainable consumption that enhance understanding of how to shift consumption patterns and on developing tools that can give feedback to the producers' side are necessary. Realization of sustainable society is possible by implementing both sustainable consumption and sustainable production as both sides of the coin.

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The present situation and subjects of environmental education for consumer are summarized based on the investigation to primary, junior and senior high schools, school of education, consumer organization, company and municipal corporation in Japan, in the last two years. Especially the education to students of primary to senior high schools is so important because they will become main consumers in near future, that results of investigation to these organizations are described more in detail, in this paper. The background of the environmental education for consumer is also mentioned in the context of development of the concepts of environmental education in about forty years by international organizations, and trend in Japan. In the paper, it is pointed out that to develop the environmental education for consumer, establishment of a environmental education system of consumer is urgently required, as well as development of more effective educational method and teaching materials and arrangement of places for the education.

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As the first step to examine a possibility of Japanese food stability, model menu was selected for home cooking with purchased ingredients and the environmental burden was evaluated by LC-CO₂ emission from cooking at home. Menu selected for the study were Toasted bread and fried egg for the breakfast, Chinese noodles in soup for lunch, and three different styles of dinner; Japanese dishes (Dinner 1), Western dishes (Dinner 2) and Chinese dishes (Dinner3). For each menu, LC-CO₂ emission from ingredients was calculated and LC-CO₂ emission from cooking was added, then total LC-CO₂ emission for the whole meal was estimated. CO₂ emission from cooking meals for one day was 1400g-CO₂ (average of 3days), which was not high level, but it could affect the environmental considering the number of households. The cooking methods produced the lowest LC-CO₂ were “Deep-fry” and “Stir-fry”, whereas “Boil” and “Steam” showed high level of LC-CO₂. Looking at the level of LC-CO₂ combined from ingredients and cooking, breakfast showed the lowest LC-CO₂ among the selected menu. Japanese style dinner showed low level of LC-CO₂ from ingredients but high level of LC-CO₂ from cooking. As for Western style dinner, beef used for Hamburger steak produced much higher level of LC-CO₂ based on an accumulated method. Therefore, the Western style dinner produced LC-CO₂ approximately twice as much as Japanese style or Chinese style dinner. This study estimated LC-CO₂ emission from the selected menu of home cooking. To analyze environmental burden of Japanese food life style more realistically, it is necessary to study environmental burden from meals eaten at restaurants and dishes using prepared or processed food even when home cooking, utilizing statistics of average Japanese eating behavior models.

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According to the 1985-90-95 linked Input-Output table for environmental analysis, in 1995 Japanese per capita CO₂ emission induced by consumption activities increased 1.3 times that of in 1985. In this study, firstly we consider why CO₂ emissions induced by consumers increased. We compare the environmental household account in each year and decompose the change of per capita induced CO₂ emission between 1985 and 95 into the effects of the consumption structure, income level and technological issue. From the decomposition analysis, we find some interesting facts. One of those is, the more part of consumption expenditure is used for services such as recreational services, the higher environmental load induced by household consumption becomes. Secondly, we try some hypothetical experiments and clarify the factor of such findings. Environment friendly behavior often pushes up the cost for consumers including opportunity cost and decreases the utility level. For example, cooking at home instead of using catering services increases the opportunity cost of housewives’ time and decreases the utility level due to inconvenience. However, per unit CO₂ emission induced by using catering services tends to be high. We estimate the demand function in linear expenditure system (LES) and try to find how some exogenous changes (for example, the decrease in relative price of catering and restaurant services or recreational services) affect the household’s demand structure, then the environmental load induced by household consumption. Through such study we are able to know what type of lifestyle is appropriate to “sustainable consumption society.”

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The objective of this study was to quantify the emission of global warming gasses associated with pig production during the breeding and fattening stages using the Life Cycle Assessment method for a Japanese farm producing approximately 3000 pigs/year. Emissions were investigated for the processes related to feed production and transport, animal management of the breeding and fattening stages, and the treatment of livestock waste. The functional unit was taken as one kilogram of pig meat. Emissions of CO₂, N₂O and CH₄ amounted to 4.07, 0.93 and 0.56 kg-CO₂ eq./kg meat, respectively, giving a total for these gases of 5.57 kg-CO₂ eq./kg meat. The emissions associated with the pig-fattening stage were 5.02 kg-CO₂ eq./kg meat, which accounted for 90% of total emissions in the pig production system. Interestingly, 70% of emissions could be attributed to feed production and transport processes, while only 8.6% of emissions could be attributed to activities related to animal management.

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