Despite the rapid and significant changes in consumption patterns witnessed during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Japanese households maintained their normal levels of greenhouse gases emissions. The “anthropause” — reduction of human activity due to the pandemic — made headlines last summer, but factory shutdowns and broken global supply chains did not translate into the adoption of eco-friendly lifestyles for the average household.
Despite the rapid and significant changes in consumption patterns witnessed during the initial months of the COVID-19 pandemic, Japanese households maintained their normal levels of greenhouse gases emissions. The “anthropause” — reduction of human activity due to the pandemic — made headlines last summer, but factory shutdowns and broken global supply chains did not translate into the adoption of eco-friendly lifestyles for the average household.
“During the early COVID-19 period, we could witness lifestyle changes happening around us fast, so we decided to explore the environmental impacts of these lifestyle changes. Some other research at that period was showing that the production-side greenhouse gases emissions decreased, but when assessing the emissions from the consumer side we noticed that they did not change so much compared to 2015 through 2019 levels,” said Project Assistant Professor Yin Long from the University of Tokyo Institute for Future Initiatives. Long is first author of the research recently published in One Earth.
Read more at University of Tokyo
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