ABSTRACT
Consumption-based accounting (CBA) is an approach for calculating ecological and social impacts related to a particular process or product, based on its full lifecycle, including the end-use, and attributing them to the final consumer. The result is called a consumption-based footprint. This approach is complementary to so-called territorial or production-based accounting, which attributes the impacts to the location where they occur or to the producer. For instance, if a particular material good is manufactured in one location and exported elsewhere, CBA attributes its impacts to the end user, whereas territorial accounting would attribute them to where it was produced. In CBA, the entity in question can be anything from an individual to an organization, city, nation, region, or the globe. On a global level, consumption-based and territorial/production-based impacts are the same.
