Metabolism and driving forces analysis of Chinese urban households

The household sector is the key field of sustainable consumption research. To analyze the ecological impacts of household consumption, HOMES project introduced the concepts of Household Metabolism. In ecological science, metabolism refers to the material cycles and energy flow that determine the viability and continuation of organism-environment interaction. On household level, the concept of household metabolism is a metaphor to study the integral pattern of natural resource flows into and out of households.First, we introduced the concept model of household metabolism, which includes three key factors and three kinds of main flows. The key factors are direction, quantity and velocity of flow. The three kinds of flows are water, energy and material. Then using this model we analyzed the change of household metabolism of Chinese urban household during the last twenty years. Rather than taking into account all the natural resources of household consumption, we just focused on water and energy flow. The increasing trends of urban household metabolism are very clear in China. Natural, economic and social factors are the main driving forces behind these trends. According to the experiences of developed counties, we concluded that the increasing trends will keep on in a short-middle period.