Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at http://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fsij20 Service Industries Journal ISSN: 0264-2069 (Print) 1743-9507 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fsij20 After Industrial Society: Service Society as Clean Society? Environmental Consequences of Increasing Service Interaction Christof Ellger & JOACHIM SCHEINER To cite this article: Christof Ellger & JOACHIM SCHEINER (1997) After Industrial Society: Service Society as Clean Society? Environmental Consequences of Increasing Service Interaction, Service Industries Journal, 17:4, 564-579, DOI: 10.1080/02642069700000035 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069700000035 Published online: 28 Jul 2006. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 42 Citing articles: 6 View citing articles
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Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found athttp://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=fsij20
After Industrial Society: Service Society asClean Society? Environmental Consequences ofIncreasing Service Interaction
Christof Ellger & JOACHIM SCHEINER
To cite this article: Christof Ellger & JOACHIM SCHEINER (1997) After Industrial Society: ServiceSociety as Clean Society? Environmental Consequences of Increasing Service Interaction, ServiceIndustries Journal, 17:4, 564-579, DOI: 10.1080/02642069700000035
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/02642069700000035
After Industrial Society: Service Society as Clean Society? Environmental Consequences
of Increasing Service Interaction
C H R I S T O F ELLGER a n d JOACHIM SCHEINER
Whereas itldustrial societ): is ktrorvti to be to a grecrt extent responsible for the degradation of the environment, service society is assunied to be rather 'cletrn'. There has, in fact, been a sirbsttrtzticrl reduction in niaterial t7ietabolisnl in itld~~strial prodilction in the developed countries. The increasing interaction intensity, however; which is charcrcteristic for a service society, results itz massive tratlsport volumes and thus in other negative envirotznietltal inlptrcts which to a large degree offset the advtttlces in itldlrstrial proclucrioti.
I N D U S T R I A L S O C I E T Y A N D T H E E N V I R O N M E N T A L P R O B L E M
The environmental problem facing our planet is basically the result of the industrialisation process. While pre-industrial societies were more or less in harmony with their environment, this relationship has drastically changed with the development of the industrial society. The environmental problem is essentially a problem of the wrong materials being in the wrong place at the wrong time, brought about by a man-made material metabolism of quantitative dimensions which in many instances goes beyond the buffer capacities of the earth's natural ecosystems. In its paradigmatic form, industrial society is based on large-scale resource extraction and material transformation into components and products. Through this, the use of both biotic and abiotic raw materials has increased manifold. During this century alone, the consumption of minerals has risen by a factor of twelve, and since about 1950 the world has consumed more minerals than in the whole previous history of humanity [Simmons, 1996: 6 141. Material flows have increased exponentially, causing more: and more damage to natural material
Christof Ellger and Joachim Scheiner are at thc Institut fur Gcographische Wissenschaften der Freien Universitiit Berlin, Grunewaldstr. 35, D-12165 Berlin.
The Service Industries Journal. Vo1.17, No.4 (October 1997), pp.56&579 P U B L I S H E D B Y F R A N K CASS. L O N D O N
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF SERVICE INTERACTION 565
flows. Consumption per capita and year in the developed countries has risen to enormous figures: 2.37 tons of oil, 1.19 tons of coal, 6.14 tons of gravel and sand, 0.19 tons of salt, 0.56 tons of steel [Eichler, 1993: 771.
The whole process is powered by the vast exploitation of energy resources, mainly fossil fuels which have developed over geological periods. Energy consumption is of course one fundamental source of the environmental problem, as energy resources are transformed into simpler chemical substances during use and thus can in principle not be recycled in any form. In addition, this also means that their use is associated with large- scale emissions. The average per capita energy consumption in pre- industrial Europe is estimated at 20-40 GJ per year, whilst the figure for the late 20th century rises to an average of about 150 GJ per year [Simmons, 1996: 6011.
For a long time, socio-economic development in the industrial society has been measured in growth rates of gross national product, and growth, here, depends essentially on the use and the transformation of matter and energy. An ever increasing quantity of output has been celebrated as success; mass production and mass consumption have become key elements of industrialism.
Whereas natural ecosystems are characterised by closed circuits of material, and 'waste' does not occur, man's material systems are characterised by one-way material flows: from resource use to goods production and use, and finally end in waste. So man-made systems are characterised by resource depletion on the one hand, and waste - in solid, liquid or gaseous form, or in the form of waste heat - on the other hand. The earlier ecological debate mainly focused on the resource side [Meadows, 19721. To date, however, the waste side is considered to be much more the limiting factor for global survival. The harmful intakes into ecosystems, be they toxic, radioactive or otherwise dangerous by initiating changes in systems beyond their buffer capacity, lead to biological degradation, loss of habitats, loss of species, loss of ecological variety, health risks for humans through air and water pollution as well as far-reaching climatic change through the changing composition of the earth's atmosphere.
An important part of industrial production today is modern agriculture, which shows all the characteristic features of industrial production: It employs a comparatively small workforce, uses machinery and chemicals on a large scale and relies on large amounts of energy input. And, in contrast to 'traditional' farming, where the refuse of one element serves as a resource for another, it produces wastes, like livestock excreta, which can no longer be used for manuring but have to be specially processed. In many countries, agriculture is today the agent most responsible for the loss of species.
566 T H E S E R V I C E I N D U S T R I E S J O U R N A L
At present, about 4 per cent of all known species are becoming extinct per decade [Simmons, 1996: 6061, or about one specie per day [Eichler, 1993: 871. Soil erosion reduces the area for wild habitats as well as for fertile lands. The global mean air temperature has increased by 0.3 to 0.6 "C since the end of the last century; and with unaltered emission of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, global mean temperature will have risen by about 2.0 "C by the end of the twenty-first century. This will result in a rise in global sea level of about 0.5 m [Umweltbundesamt, 1996: 471.
S E R V I C E S O C I E T Y A N D T H E E N V I R O N M E N T : G E N E R A L A S P E C T S
The emerging service society is certainly not a post-manufacturing society; the production and distribution of material goods is still a dominant form of economic activity and value production. But manufacturing's contribution to employment or gross national product figures is decreasing while that of services is increasing. In Germany (figures, as throughout, only for former West Germany), manufacturing now employs just over a third of the labour force, and with these figures, Germany is even considered 'over- industrialised' in comparison to other OECD countries. The percentage of people employed in manufacturing (compared to all employed) has decreased from 47.9 per cent i n 1960 to 37.1 per cent in 1993. Manufacturing's contribution to value added has also decreased, even at a slightly faster rate, from 47.9 per cent (1960) to 35.7 per cent (1993), while banking and producer services show the steepest increases. This shows once again how economic activity is shifting from material work to services and, even more, to knowledge production. However, the manufacturing sector in developed countries is underrated as the latter delegate considerable portions of industrial production (including polluting production such as alumina processing) to Third World countries, i n the context of a global division of labour.
Even if the services which we classify as material services (like hotels and catering, construction work, repair work or cleaning) require material resources and energy, the overall material ~netabolism effect of the service sector is generally quite small compared to all non-service industries. As interaction processes between supplier and user, be they material or informational, services basically require little more than premises, buildings, heating and lighting. In Germany, the whole service sector accounts for just under 10 per cent of all energy consumption (Tablel), although there has been an absolute and relative increase over the past few years. Its contribution to waste water volumc is negligible as well. A number of services, however, do require substantial material factor preparation on the supplier's side, like hospitals or fire brigades or, above
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF SERVICE INTERACTION 567
all, the military. This is an explanation for the fact that the statistics show a higher energy demand for public services than for private commercial services. Note that the proportion which banking and insurance hold in total energy demand is still negligible, despite a doubling of absolute energy consumption during the 1980s.
T A B L E I USE OF ENERGY BY ECONOMIC SECTORS IN WEST GERMANY. 1980 AND 1991 AS A
PERCENTAGE OF TOTAL USE
Sector 1980 1991
agriculture, fishery energy production oil industry chemical industry other manufacturing services - construction - trade - transport - banking and insurance - other commercial services - public services households all
- absolute (in Petajoule)
Source: Statistical Yearbook FRG
The 'rationalisation of production' in manufacturing now also extends into the arena of resource and energy input. With increasing costs for energy and raw materials, and with technological advances, less material input as well as less labour is needed to produce one product unit. Resource use efficiency (or materials productivity) is increasing [Simonis, 1994: 331. Table 1 shows that for the period considered, energy turnover in manufacturing has actually decreased, whilst output has increased at the same time. Nevertheless, the potential for further energy and material savings is still far greater, and with more intelligent energy systems the high consumption figures for energy production itself (a result of currently low efficiency rates) and for households (where an increased material consumption accompanies an increased housing floorspace per capita) could be reduced substantially.
568 T H E SERVICE I N D U S T R I E S J O U R N A L
Two further questions deserve special attention when one attempts to assess the environmental impact of the 'service society': first, the servicing versus self-servicing relationship and, second, the problem of services and transport.
With comparatively high costs for labour and much lower costs for material consumption, services are replaced by purchases of material goods and associated 'self-servicing' by consumers [Gershuny, 19781. Thus, washing machines have replaced jobs in laundries, the television has replaced the cinema, the private car has replaced public means of transport, industrially produced (and frozen) meals are substituting meals in restaurants and so on. These forms of 'industrialisation' of services do, of course, increase manufacturing output, packaging and material metabolism. Similarly, in modern self-service retailing, the special packaging of individual objects, a theft-preventive measure, makes retailing less labour- and more material-intensive than it would otherwise have to be. In a situation where energy and material resources are comparatively cheap and labour becomes extremely expensive, i t is only logical that 'true' service solutions for consumer demand problems as opposed to self-service solutions do not appear very competitive. It seems that factor prices for labour on the one hand and material and energy resources on the other hand play an important role here, and changes in taxation (deflecting taxation from labour to energy) would certainly shift production from manufacturing to services. Extreme costs for material metabolism, coupled with strict waste reprocessing regulations could even lead to scenarios where material goods of all kind would only be rented out by supply firms for use, and private ownership of material goods that is so widespread and characteristic for 'consumer society' would be substantially reduced [Bongaerts, 19941. In addition, however, the service versus self-service question is not only an economic but also a cultural and political issue [Illeris, 1996: 441.
The intrinsic environmental problem of services, however, seems to be the transport problem: services are, necessarily, interactions between the supply and demand sides. In many cases, apart from telecommunicative interaction, services demand the co-presence of supplier and user, their physical get-together, so that the 'change' of the user or hislher object [Hill, 19771 can be brought about. Thus, increasing service processes means increasing interaction and often results in increasing transport, both goods transport (in material services, including trade of goods) and passenger transport (personal services, elite communication services). The strong increase in energy consumption for transport (Table 1) can certainly be partly attributed to increasing service interaction. Service pollution is basically transport pollution. With rather low energy consumption values, a 'telematics society' would be less harmful towards the environment, but so
E N V I R O N M E N T A L C O N S E Q U E N C E S O F SERVICE INTERACTION 569
far the massive substitution of real transport by virtual transport has not yet occurred.
But transport is not only a condition for many services to be performed at all, it is, of course, a service itself, namely, an interaction process between supply and demand. Here, the 'change' of the user (or his or her object) consists of a change of location brought about by the institution on the supply side. Transport requires massive material inputs, as the sector is characterised by very heavy long-term investment in physical infrastructure by the transport institutions, which are traditionally public, but now increasingly becoming private.
S E R V I C E I N T E R A C T I O N A N D T R A N S P O R T V O L U M E
Servicing Production: Goods and Passenger Transport
Goods transport. Notwithstanding the deindustrialisation tendencies described above, the volume of national and international goods transport is rapidly increasing. This is essentially the result of ever more complex supplier-producer as well as supplier-supplier links in the production process of manufactured goods.
Using the example of a jar of strawberry yoghurt of a large milk product manufacturer based in Stuttgart, Stefanie Boge has analysed supply links, spatial distribution of suppliers, spatial interaction and transport volume within the production process [Boge, 19931. The transport demand for a single jar of strawberry yoghurt equals 10 lorry metres. For the whole load of a 34-ton lorry, this amounts to 1,000 lorry kilometres. The figures are calculated on the basis of the transport volume for both the product and the packaging components. Quartz sand for the glass is mined in Frechen, Northrhine-Westphalia, the glass jar is produced in Bavaria. Aluminium comes from Australia, Brazil or Ghana, via Duisburg harbour, and is transformed into lids and printed in eastern Bavaria. Paper for the labels comes from Hamburg, the labels themselves are produced in northern Bavaria. Glue for fixing the labels is produced from a mixture of maize and wheat powder, which come from various regions of the EU to Diisseldorf where they are processed. The strawberries come from Poland, from there they are taken to Aachen on the western border of Germany, where they are processed to jam. The yoghurt bacteria come from the Danish border. In this example, two major ingredients, milk and sugar, come from regional suppliers in south-west Germany. To be distributed to shops, more packaging is needed, cartons for 20 jars, cardboard cases (all from northern Germany), wooden palettes as well as plastic foils (from France). The strawberry yoghurt case is not at all an extreme example. Chocolate
5 70 THE SERVICE I N D U S T R I E S J O U R N A L
pudding produced by the same company is 45 per cent more transport intensive: the aluminium lids travel from Duisburg to Vienna and then to Stuttgart to be used in packaging there.
The yoghurt jar example demonstrates a number of important characteristics of modem production organisation which decisively affect spatial interaction: raw materials and components come from large numbers of out-of-house suppliers (outsourcing). Suppliers on various levels of the production process can be sought in the most distant regions (global sourcing) to make use of scale and scope economies as well as the comparative advantages of specialised component producers. Most routes are done by lorries. There are linkages between suppliers on various levels of production. Finally, there are quite different organisational and spatial supply linkage patterns, even for products which are very similar.
In addition, products are becorning more differentiated; the number of potentially produceable and available products has risen enormously. Highly specialised products or components are increasingly produced in small numbers. This differentiation and individualisation of products as well as of demand patterns makes manufacturing more and more service- like. This also means, however, that distances between production locations and the locations of the various suppliers tend to increase further.
Instead of providing more storage capacity for the increasing number of different components and products, firms try to reduce their stores and demand quick delivery from their suppliers. This in turn necessitates high delivery frequencies, even for small charges [Kulke, 1994: 2961. Costs for storage capacities are externalised to the supplier in the form of 'rolling storage'. Transport costs seem to be rather negligible in this context, they make up only a few per cent in total production costs. So, for instance, costs for container freight between the United States and Asia are given at about 5 cent per ton [Boge, 1996: 191.
Telecommunication makes these ever more complex processes of material interaction possible. Such complicated goods flows could not be organised in time and space without advanced telecommunication and information processing technology to coordinate them. Information flows and physical flows must go hand i n hand [Li, 1995: 1971.
In the situation of increasing complexity of goods flows, two types of means of transport show significant advantages: the lorry and the aircraft. The lorry outmatches the railways because it is ubiquitous, whereas railways do not run everywhere, their networks are too coarsely grained. To reach most destinations, goods must be reloaded onto lorries in most cases anyhow, and intermodal transport becomes more and more expensive and more difficult to handle. The advantage of the railway system lies in the fact that it can transport large quantities of goods, but this advantage is less and
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF SERVICE INTERACTION 571
less important. Only in intermodal land-sea-transport with long continental routes, rail transport plays a significant role [Floeting, 1995: 381. The aeroplane offers the necessary speed over large distances for the high
,proportion of time-sensitive goods in national and international traffic. With existing capacities, even agricultural products are transported by air [Boge, 1996: 81.
T A B L E 2 TRANSPORT VOLUME:
FREIGHTS TRANSPORT, WEST GERMANY, 1975-92 (lo9 TON KILOMETRES)
long-distance road transport 59.3 regional road transport 36.7 air transport (in 10' tkms) 17.8 rail transpon 55.3 inland waterways 47.6 pipelines 14.6
Source: BMV. 1995.
Therefore, the most substantial increase in transport performance is in road transport as well as in air transport (Table 2). In Germany, both have doubled their transport figures between the mid-1970s and the beginning of the 1990s. Less than 20 per cent of all ton kilometres now run on railways, and the percentage is decreasing further.
Passenger transport: business people on the move. One of the most important changes in the organisation of the economy world-wide concerns the enormous increase in information and knowledge work, in firms and business services [Illeris, 1996: 182; Marshall and Wood: 43f.l. Information has more than ever become the decisive factor for economic action [Ellger, 19961. This means, above all, that communicative interaction between decision-makers on various levels increases substantially. Much of this communication can and does take place via telecommunication, i.e. via paper massages, telephone, fax machines, electronic text and data exchange. But many communication processes remain, where (mutual) learning processes of the communicants are involved and a high 'richness' of communication channels is necessary [Daft and Lengel, 19901, so that these have to take place as face-to-face meetings. Here again, information technology can substitute for personal contacts and movements, but also pave the way for more interpersonal contacts.
572 THE SERVICE INDUSTRIES JOURNAL
T A B L E 3 TRANSPORT VOLUME LN WEST GERMANY, 1976-94, BY TRAVEL PURPOSE
travel transpon change transport change purpose 1994 1976-94 1994 1976-94
106 trips I@ trips per cent 10' person kms IOq person kms
The sharp increase in business travels is strongly reflected in analyses of traffic behaviour. For West Germany, KONTIV provides source material and evidence.' Between 1976 and 1994, a period when population in West Germany increased by 7.2 per cent and the number of all people employed increased by 8.5 per cent, the total passenger transport volume, expressed in person kilometres, increased by one third, mostly through increasing distances, less through more journeys (Table 3). Second only to tourist travel, business travel has increased far above average; both travel purposes show much more journeys and larger distances in 1994 than in 1976.
By far the largest number of business trips is performed in cars, by drivers. The proportion of the car (used by drivers) in the modal split has decreased, nevertheless, from 85 per cent to 82 per cent between 1976 and 1994, because increases in railway and aircraft use for business purposes are far above average: Air traffic increased by 78 per cent, which has brought the aeroplane to 7 per cent of all business person kilometres in 1994. The use of the railway has increased even more: by 224 per cent, but rail transport still comes third in importance for business travels, with just over 4 per cent of all passenger kilometres. The remaining per cent values are covered by non-drivers in cars (4 per cent) and public regional transport (increasing from 2 to 2.3 per cent), whilst foot and bicycle use are statistically negligible.
These results show a strong trend towards high speed transportation in business journeys. The increase in rail transport is very much related to the introduction of new intercity (IC), eurocity (EC) and intercity express (ICE) trains and services in Germany during the last 20 years, linking the dominant urban centres of the decentralised city system in Germany with each other and offering quick and reliable connections, with the additional
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF SERVICE INTERACTION 573
possibility to use a lot of travelling time for work. Locations near central railway stations in the largest urban centres in Germany have strengthened their role as meeting points for business people, with their service functions (in finance, business services, headquarters institutions, etc.) and their nation-wide train accessibility. On an international level, however, airports seem even more important as communication places.
Service development, service concentration in dominant centres in city systems and in global cities on a world-wide scale go hand in hand with business travel increases. This, also, is the background to the European Union's efforts to substantially expand European networks of high-speed transportation.
From an environmental perspective, the shift from car to rail transport is not necessarily an advantage, as the energy demand of high-speed electric trains, calculated per passenger, is not lower than that of cars, due to the low efficiency rates in electricity production, the wind resistance which is increasing exponentially with speed as well as the inertia of the very heavy trains, which results in big losses in fast acceleration and retardation [Zangl, 19931.
Consumer Services: Exurban Disecology
It is very difficult to assess the relation of service consumption to self- service work in the households as well as their increase or decrease over time. It becomes clear, however, from value added statistics for West Germany that growth is much stronger in some branches than in others and conclusions can be drawn concerning shifts of demand: Growth is substantially above average in the areas of health services as well as in banking and insurance (which of course also provide services for producers), which confirms experience from other studies [Illeris, 1996: 451. On the other hand, the hotel and catering branch, commercial education and entertainment as well as the media - very much in contrast to excessive hopes of a 'multimedia society'! - are growing significantly more slowly than the economy on the whole, whereas retailing is also growing on average at a faster rate than the economy. These observations may suggest a somewhat increasing role of self-servicing.
With regard to consumer services, however, the environmental impacts will, as with producer services, mainly result from changes in transport behaviour and movements, linking users and suppliers in physical space. It seems that distances in service interaction between households and service suppliers are increasing here, too, and that the environment is damaged by these developments.
Household locations and spatial change. Travel increases result to a large degree from the deconcentration processes in population distribution.
5 74 T H E SERVICE INDUSTRIES J O U R N A L
Centrifugal population shifts in West Gennany, away from the large metropolitan areas, have been analysed for more than two decades now, in contrast to East Germany, where features of continuing urbanisation persisted until the end of the GDR.
Whereas in the 1970s the deconcentration process was predominantly analysed on a micro-spatial scale, i.e. as suburbanisation, as shifts from rural areas and metropolitan cores to the suburban fringe of metropolitan areas, in the 1980s the idea came up that there was deconcentration on a macro-spatial scale, with population shifts from urban areas to rural areas, i.e. a complete turn-around in migration and population shifts, known as 'counterurbanisation' [Kanaroglou and Braun, 19921. To be sure, there are elements of counterurbanisation to be observed, associated with migration from metropolitan areas to small urban places and communes in rural areas, e.g. by retired people. The overall trend, however, dominating the 1980s and 1990s, appears to be a new wave of sub-suburbanisation, which reaches further into former rural areas and which is also known as 'exurbanisation'. It means, above all, filling up spaces beyond the established suburban fringe. It has also been termed the 'urbanised countryside' [Warneryd, 1995: 71. It is also considered as the predominant spatial trend in the United States since the 1960s [Davis, Nelson and Dueker, 19941. For the last decade, West Germany shows population increases in all area categories (metropolitan areas, urbanised areas, rural areas) and their subcategories. In total, population rose by 5.6 per cent between 1980 and 1992. Most of the additional population, however, is recorded i n suburban belts of metropolitan areas (36.1 per cent of the increase of 1980-92), in the suburban belts of the somewhat less densely inhabited urbanised areas (25.2 per cent) as well as in medium-density areas within rural areas, close to urbanised areas (12.3 per cent). Metropolitan cores and core cities of urbanised areas show the lowest increases [Irmen and Blach, 19941. Thus, suburban and exurban (mainly 'between-urban') spaces gain most. Here, households can realize their family homes aspirations (or generally tind housing at an affordable rate), escape from central metropolitan pollution and noise, and still be in close contact with the core city and suburban fringe for work purposes, private contacts and, after all, service supply.
For many households, the exurban move means a chance to live not only a more individualised life but also a Inore 'ecological' life than in the city, in less polluted environment and in biological architecture built from natural materials, avoiding man-made chemicals in building and house- keeping, perhaps also closer to producers of organic food (or growing one's own). On the other hand, however, a location on the new edge of the far- reaching metropolitan fringe results in enormously increasing transport
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF SERVICE INTERACTION 575
demands, as interaction patterns become more complicated and routes become longer and longer.
Service interaction. Although the increases in transport volume for work, educational, shopping and leisure purposes are below average (Table 3), they are rather substantial in absolute figures, especially for leisure. This is the result of the individualisation of transport patterns based on the use of the private car [Kagermeier, 1994; Rothengatter, 19941. Car traffic is increasing enormously, as more movements are done in cars, while less people sit in the cars. In West Germany, the use of the car (by drivers) has increased by 56 per cent, between 1976 and 1994, and brought up car driving from 47 per cent to 55 per cent in the modal split. Car passengers (as non-drivers) have increased far below average, so their contribution to total transport volume has decreased from 27 per cent to 22 per cent. Rail and bicycle transport have kept up their percentages in the modal split (with 7 per cent and 2 per cent respectively), whilst public transport (from 11 per cent to 9 per cent) and walking (from 4 per cent to 3 per cent) have lost most, walking even in absolute figures [Kloas and Kuhfeld, 1996: 61 81. From the KONTIV figures can be noticed that the total number of routes is hardly increasing. Instead, routes become longer and more individualised, i.e, car-oriented. Time spent with transport activities is also more or less constant, but with increasing use of cars distances become longer.
This affects, of course, commuters' travelling patterns. More and Inore commuters come from more distant areas; 'catchment areas' are increasing vastly. An expanding proportion of transport relations is now no longer touching the metropolitan core, as places of work have suburbanised as well [Kutter and Stein, 19961. More commuting relations are oriented towards dispersed locations, which are often not or only with great difficulties served by public transport.
Distances in service supply relations are also increasing. The number of trips for shopping purposes has actually expanded only slightly between 1976 and 1994, whereas transport volume in person kilometres has increased more considerably (Table 3). Many trips which in the 1970s were still undertaken on foot have now become car journeys, and they have become more rare, but over larger distances. This is both cause and result of the fact that local retailing outlets and other consumer services have been closed on a large scale and supply is now overwhelmingly by green-field sites. There is also increasing public transport and bicycle use for shopping trips, which must, however, in many cases be interpreted as a form of forced mobility for carless households, as local supplies close to the customers' residence are waning. Car-owner households do not usually change to public transport [Holz-Rau, 1993: 111.
576 T H E S E R V I C E INDUSTRIES J O U R N A L
L E I S U R E A N D T O U R I S M
Leisure is by far the most travel intensive function of the list of six travel purposes. 38 per cent of all trips and 40 per cent of all person kilornetres in West Germany 1994 are registered as leisure trips, which includes journeys to reach recreational facilities or the countryside and journeys to pay visits to other people. Therefore, there is not necessarily always a service involved at the destination. The figures show the enormous expansion of activity ranges in space, made possible by increasing spare time and car ownership. Again, the largest share of transport volumc is recorded in the form of car kilometres, 46 per cent of the total by drivers and an additional 35 per cent by non-drivers, so that only 20 per cent of all leisure distances are covered by means of transport other than thc car. This, again, reflects the growing spatial complexity of interaction patterns.
Analysed from an environmental perspective, however, leisure activities are not just a transport problem. As far as the leisure scrviccs themselves are concerned, there are environmentally friendly services among them as well as rather unfriendly ones. To the fonner belong most indoor activities, to the latter some outdoor events with high demands on ground, energy and other resources and corresponding pollution effects, like motor-racing.
Tourism can be looked at as a whole bundle of services (transport services, hotel and catering, sports and other countryside as well as urban activities) which are provided for broadly recreational purposes of the users, at some distance away from their home residences and connected with journeys of usually more than five days. It is the field where the number of journeys as well as the person kilometres have increased most between 1976 and 1994. More households are taking part in tourism altogether, and a growing number of households takes more than one holiday per year now. 'Second holidays' and 'short holidays' have become fashionable, and the average distance of journeys has even decreased with this latter trend.
Tourism in the twentieth century is of course a great story of success. But tourism is necessarily always associated with substantial use of the environment and severe environmental impacts. Here, more than in any other field of service research, problems of environmental aspects of services can be found. So, at present, there is a growing body of literature concerning 'sustainable tourism' [Pricstley et cil . , 19961.
E N V I R O N M E N T A L E F F E C T S OF S E R V I C E I N T E R A C T I O N
For many service activities the environmental impact is comparatively small. Especially those abstract service activities, including financial services, which basically deal with information processing, on paper and
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSEQUENCES OF SERVICE INTERACTION 577
increasingly on an electronic base, can on the whole be viewed as rather environmentally friendly. On the other hand, there are material services, with high rates of material metabolism, which must count as problematic for the environment.
The analytical link between services and the environment must, however, be found in an investigation of transport aspects as services are interactions between suppliers and users, which for material services must meet in real space. Usually, the environmental discussion on transport focuses on a single issue, this was CO emissions in the 1970s, NOx emissions in the 1980s and the increase of the greenhouse gas C 0 2 in the 1990s. But transport has a whole bundle of negative environmental effects which must be considered together.
There are technological advances in transport technology, especially in engine construction, which considerably reduce environmental effects. But i t is important to note that the increase in transport activity more than offsets the technical advances. In addition, vehicles are becoming more heavy and faster on average, which means that they consume more fuel [BMV, 1995: 2861. In Germany, most noxious air components are now predominantly emitted by road traffic. All other emission sectors are reducing their contributions to air pollution, with the exception of power stations which are increasingly responsible for rising C02 emissions [BMV, 1995: 289f.l. Industry and energy sector have cut their NO, emissions by more than haif since 1986, whereas transport emissions have remained stable on a high level [Umweltbundesamt, 1996: 2171. This also means that the inner-city pollution situation has improved very little over the last two years, pollutants from traffic simply substituting industrial and power station emissions, and noise being still an unsolved and urging problem essentially caused by traffic.
CONCLUSION
Rationalising metabolism processes not only with regard to labour input but also with regard to energy and resource use, the increasingly knowledge- based service society shows considerable advantages over manufacturing- based industrial society in terms of environmental impacts. These are, however, counteracted in part by the increasing role of transport for service interaction, especially as far as goods and passenger transport are concerned.
The substitution effects of information technology appear rather small. Instead, expanding and differentiating information and communication technologies offer even more chances to organise more linkages and more movement in space, to pack more traffic on the existing routes.
578 THE S E R V I C E I N D U S T R I E S J O U R N A L
The organisation of society in space is to a great extent linked to spatial costs in the form of transport costs, respectively energy costs. And transport is still very cheap at present, which favours long-distance interaction on a massive scale. The Federal Environmental Agency in Germany points out that in road traffic, despite heavy taxation, user costs are still externalised considerably [Umweltbundesamt, 1996: 3761. In turn, higher energy prices and eco-taxes would result in higher competitiveness of regional suppliers and more regional interaction patterns. More regional supply of services of various kinds could be offered, and the phenomenon of 'forced mobility' - due to lack of service facilities in near reach - would be less pronounced. 'Containment' of metropolitan areas, still the established spatial target in Germany, could have a chance. or' the moment, however, with heavy investments in inter-city networks on the national as well as the European level, and priority to high-speed transport and motorway construction, transport policy is massively counteracting this aim.
Changing relations between energy and material resource costs on the one hand and labour costs on the other, brought forward by eco-taxation, would also affect the servicelself-service configuration and shift it more towards service intensive and less matcrial intensive solutions.
N O T E S
I. KONTIV (Kontinuierliche Erhebung zum Verkehrsverhalten; Continuous Survey on Traffic Behaviour) is based on a large questionnaire survey, sent to interviewees at their places of residence, comprising questions concerning their activities in time and space both for a given day and for a given year. Business trips appear, in fact, to be underrepresented, as the residential population is surveyed. KONTIV was developed in the early 1970s, supplies comparable data series for 1976, 1982 and 1989, and is supplemented for later years by extrapolations based on official statistical data.
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