Environmental Impact of Changes in Consumption Styles

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Abstract
This article examines the environmental impacts of modernizing consumption styles in six European nations, the USA and aggregates for all European community countries. Modernizing consumption decreases home production of consumable goods and services while increasing market efficiency through purchase and home storage of time-labor saving products. However modernizing consumption also results in raising environmental impacts as measured by the amount and composition of post-consumption waste, the amount and composition of energy use, and pollution and resource depletion. Qualitative changes in consumption styles resulting from enrichment as well as modernization argue for recycling, demanufacturing, demarketing, and reorientation of marketing goals to mitigate the negative environment impacts of modernized consumption measured in this article.