Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
One thing consumers could really use is information on those "breakeven points" for products... it would help make smart decisions (especially on products like "disposables," which often have no breakeven point). If we ever get serious about tracking environmental costs and impacts on products, and including those costs into pricing, breakeven data will be important.
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Well, the whole idea of "breakeven" is to compare two items, and in this context, we're usually comparing durable goods
to disposables. But to compare durable goods to other durable goods, we'd need a raw "energy to manufacture" value (and possibly "kilos of pollutants" as well). "Energy to manufacture" probably does get factored into the cost to the consumer, but "kilos of pollutants" often does not, resulting in one generation building up the environmental equivalent of debt that the next will need to deal with.
