Raw Material Consumption Controls on Environment Impacts of Sofa Production: A Case Study Based on Ecological Footprint

Wooden furniture production consumes a lot of forest resource and other resources, so it is important to estimate its environmental effect. In this research, we collected data in a sofa factory of China and appraised its environment impacts by the ecological footprint(EF) methodology. The results showed that the total EF of the sofa factory was 2 316.25 gha/year(gha: global hectare). The average EF of a sofa was 0.18 gha/year. For the total EF of the sofa factory, main contribution came from wooden materials(55%),followed by non-wooden materials(41.26%), and these two categories contributed above 96% of the total EF. Human labor accounted for 2.21% of the total footprint. The built land and water contributed a little to the total EF. For the total EF of the wooden materials,main contribution came from wood beams(57.6%), followed by plywood(41.08%); and for the total EF of the non-wooden materials,main contribution came from sponge(95.37%). In the end, we concluded that the incorporate of recycled wooden material and reused sponge in the sofa production could be viewed as an important strategy to achieve more sustainable manufacturing.