Integration of environment and nutrition in life cycle assessment of food items: opportunities and challenges

This report is the outcome of a consensus-building project to agree on best practices for environmental and nutritional Life Cycle Assessment (nLCA) methodology, and identify future research needs. The project involved 30 nutritional and environmental LCA researchers from 18 countries. It focused on the assessment of food items (as opposed to meals or diets).Best practice recommendations were developed to address the intended purpose of an LCA study and related modeling approach, choice of an appropriate functional unit, assessment of nutritional value, and reporting nLCA results. An nLCA study should report the quantities of as many essential nutrients as possible and aim to provide information on the nutritional quality and/or health impacts in addition to nutrient quantities. Outstanding issues requiring further research attention include: defining a minimum number of nutrients to be considered in an nLCA study; treatment of nutrients to limit; use of nutrient indexes; further development of Impact Assessment methods; representation of nutritional changes that may occur during subsequent distribution and food preparation in cradle-to-gate nLCA studies; and communication of data uncertainty and variability. More data are required for different regions (particularly developing countries); for the processing, distribution, retail, and consumption life cycle stages; and for food loss and waste. Finally, there is a need to extend nLCA methodology for the assessment of meals and diets, to consider further how to account for the multi-functionality of food in a sustainability framework, and to set nLCA studies within the context of environmental limits.These results provide a robust basis for improving nLCA methodology and applying it to identify solutions that minimize the trade-offs between nourishing populations and safeguarding the environment

Global guidance on environmental life cycle impact assessment indicators: Progress and case study

International audiencePurpose: The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) guidance flagship project of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)/Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) Life Cycle Initiative aims at providing global guidance and building scientific consensus on environmental LCIA indicators. This paper presents the progress made since 2013, preliminary results obtained for each impact category and the description of a rice life cycle assessment (LCA) case study designed to test and compare LCIA indicators. Methods: The effort has been focused in a first stage on impacts of global warming, fine particulate matter emissions, water use and land use, plus cross-cutting issues and LCA-based footprints. The paper reports the process and progress and specific results obtained in the different task forces (TFs). Additionally, a rice LCA case study common to all TF has been developed. Three distinctly different scenarios of producing and cooking rice have been defined and underlined with life cycle inventory data. These LCAs help testing impact category indicators which are being developed and/or selected in the harmonisation process. The rice LCA case study further helps to ensure the practicality of the finally recommended impact category indicators. Results and discussion: The global warming TF concludes that analysts should explore the sensitivity of LCA results to metrics other than GWP. The particulate matter TF attained initial guidance of how to include health effects from PM2.5 exposures consistently into LCIA. The biodiversity impacts of land use TF suggests to consider complementary metrics besides species richness for assessing biodiversity loss. The water use TF is evaluating two stress-based metrics, AWaRe and an alternative indicator by a stakeholder consultation. The cross-cutting issues TF agreed upon maintaining disability-adjusted life years (DALY) as endpoint unit for the safeguard subject 'human health'. The footprint TF defined main attributes that should characterise all footprint indicators. 'Rice cultivation' and 'cooking' stages of the rice LCA case study contribute most to the environmental impacts assessed. Conclusions: The results of the TF will be documented in white papers and some published in scientific journals. These white papers represent the input for the Pellston workshop', taking place in Valencia, Spain, from 24 to 29 January 2016, where best practice, harmonised LCIA indicators and an update on the general LCIA framework will be discussed and agreed on. With the diversity in results and the multi-tier supply chains, the rice LCA case study is well suited to test candidate recommended indicators and to ensure their applicability in common LCA case studies

Mapping phosphorus hotspots in Sydney’s organic wastes: a spatially-explicit inventory to facilitate urban phosphorus recycling

Phosphorus is an essential element for food production whose main global sources are becoming scarce and expensive. Furthermore, losses of phosphorus throughout the food production chain can also cause serious aquatic pollution. Recycling urban organic waste resources high in phosphorus could simultaneously address scarcity concerns for agricultural producers who rely on phosphorus fertilisers, and waste managers seeking to divert waste from landfills to decrease environmental burdens. Recycling phosphorus back to agricultural lands however requires careful logistical planning to maximize benefits and minimize costs, including processing and transportation. The first step towards such analyses is quantifying recycling potential in a spatially explicit way. Here we present such inventories and scenarios for the Greater Sydney Basin’s recyclable phosphorus supply and agricultural demand. In 2011, there was 15 times more phosphorus available in organic waste than agricultural demand for phosphorus in Sydney. Hypothetically, if future city residents shifted to a plant-based diet, eliminated edible food waste, and removed animal production in the Greater Sydney Basin, available phosphorus supply would decrease to 7.25 kt of phosphorus per year, even when accounting for population growth by 2031, and demand would also decrease to 0.40 kt of phosphorus per year. Creating a circular phosphorus economy for Sydney, in all scenarios considered, would require effective recycling strategies which include transport outside of the Greater Sydney Basin. These spatially explicit scenarios can be used as a tool to facilitate stakeholders engagement to identify opportunities and barriers for appropriate organic waste recycling strategies

Greenhouse gas implications of peri-urban land use change in a developed city under four future climate scenarios

Present decisions about urbanization of peri-urban (PU) areas may contribute to the capacity of cities to mitigate future climate change. Comprehensive mitigative responses to PU development should require integration of urban form and food production to realise potential trade-offs. Despite this, few studies examine greenhouse gas (GHG) implications of future urban development combined with impacts on PU food production. In this paper, four future scenarios, at 2050 and 2100 time horizons, were developed to evaluate the potential GHG emissions implications of feeding and housing a growing urban population in Sydney, Australia. The scenarios were thematically downscaled from the four relative concentration pathways. Central to the scenarios were differences in population, technology, energy, housing form, transportation, temperature, food production and land use change (LUC). A life cycle assessment approach was used within the scenarios to evaluate differences in GHG impacts. Differences in GHG emissions between scenarios at the 2100 time horizon, per area of PU land transformed, approximated 0.7 Mt CO-e per year. Per additional resident this equated to 0.7 to 6.1 t CO-e per year. Indirect LUC has the potential to be significant. Interventions such as carbon capture and storage technology, renewables and urban form markedly reduced emissions. However, incorporating cross-sectoral energy saving measures within urban planning at the regional scale requires a paradigmatic shift

Data from: Mapping phosphorus hotspots in Sydney’s organic wastes: a spatially-explicit inventory to facilitate urban phosphorus recycling

Phosphorus is an essential element for food production whose main global sources are becoming scarce and expensive. Furthermore, losses of phosphorus throughout the food production chain can also cause serious aquatic pollution. Recycling urban organic waste resources high in phosphorus could simultaneously address scarcity concerns for agricultural producers who reply on phosphorus fertilisers, and waste managers seeking to divert waste from landfills to decrease environmental burdens. Recycling phosphorus back to agricultural lands however requires careful logistical planning to maximize benefits and minimize costs including, processing and transportation. The first step towards such analyses is quantifying recycling potential in a spatially-explicit way. Here we present such inventories and scenarios for the Greater Sydney Basin’s recyclable phosphorus supply and agricultural demand. In 2011, there was fifteen times more phosphorus available in organic waste than agricultural demand for phosphorus in Sydney. Hypothetically, if future city residents shifted to a plant-based diet, eliminated edible food waste, and removed animal production in the Greater Sydney Basin, available phosphorus supply would decrease to 7.25 kt of phosphorus per year, even when accounting for population growth by 2031, and demand would also decrease to 0.40 kt of phosphorus per year. Creating a circular phosphorus economy for Sydney, in all scenarios considered, would require effective recycling strategies which include transport outside of the Greater Sydney Basin. These spatially explicit scenarios can be used as a tool to facilitate stakeholders engagement to identify opportunities and barriers for appropriate organic waste recycling strategies