Life cycle environmental impacts of convenience food: Comparison of ready and home-made meals

This paper compares the life cycle environmental impacts of ready-made meals manufactured industrially with meals prepared at home from scratch. A typical roast dinner consisting of chicken meat, vegetables and tomato sauce is considered. The results suggest that the impacts of the home-made meal are lower than for the equivalent ready-made meal. For example, the global warming and human toxicity potentials are up to 35% lower and eutrophication, photochemical smog and ozone layer depletion are up to 3 times lower. The main reasons for this are the avoidance of meal manufacturing, reduced refrigeration and a lower amount of waste in the life cycle of the home-made meal. For the ready-made meal, the lowest impacts are found for the frozen meal prepared from fresh ingredients and heated at home in a microwave. The worst option for most impacts is the frozen ready-made meal with frozen ingredients that is heated in an electric oven. For the same cooking method, chilled ready-made meals have higher impacts than the frozen. The type of refrigerant used in the supply chain influences the impacts, particularly global warming and ozone layer depletion. The contribution of packaging is important for some impacts, including global warming, fossil fuel depletion and human toxicity. The main hotspots for both types of meal are the ingredients, waste and cooking method chosen by the consumer. Using organic instead of conventional ingredients leads to higher impacts. Sourcing chicken and tomatoes from Brazil and Spain, respectively, reduces environmental impacts of the meals compared to sourcing them from the UK, despite the long-distance transport. The findings of the study are used to make recommendations to producers, retailers and consumers on reducing the environmental impacts from food production and consumption.The authors are grateful to RCUK (grant no. EP/K011820) and BECAS Chile for sponsoring this research

Introduction of life cycle assessment and sustainability concepts in chemical engineering curricula

Purpose The implementation of life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprinting represents an important professional and research opportunity for chemical engineers, but this is not broadly reflected in chemical engineering curricula worldwide. This paper aims to present the implementation of a coursework that is easy to apply, free of cost, valid worldwide and flexible enough to cover such holistic topics. Design/methodology/approach An analysis of chemical engineering curricula worldwide, a literature review and the implementation of a coursework case study are detailed. The latter combines practical exercises using free LCA software, oral presentations and debates. Findings The coursework goes beyond the calculation of results, giving the students key transferable skills to increase their employability, such as the capacity to negotiate/discuss in groups, software learning and development of critical thinking. The course is affordable and flexible, enabling adaptation to different sectors and engineering schools. One limitation is the challenge of ensuring robustness and consistency in marking, but this has been already improved with a more explicit rubric. The feedback of the students confirms these findings, including the learning of transferable skills as the major advantage. Originality/value This paper addresses, for the first time, the current state of “life cycle thinking” teaching in the curricula of the top 25 chemical engineering schools worldwide, a literature review of previous experience and a description of a novel coursework taking a theoretical and practical approach to LCA, carbon footprinting and socio-economic sustainability via a free software and a comprehensive range of didactic activities. </jats:sec

Countries 2000

Suomen virallinen tilasto (SVT

Idea merchants and paradigm peddlers in global antitrust

In the global field of antitrust law, policy paradigms are pushed and pulled by forces analogous to those of the market. Policy entrepreneurs (typically competition law agencies) operate in a setting where, notwithstanding various cooperative platforms, competition and rivalry occur and manifest themselves in a number of dimensions. This article is thus premised on the notion that competition enforcers across jurisdictions compete among themselves on a global ‘market’. It ventures beyond extant scholarship by elaborating more fully on the modes through which this competitive behavior is pursued. The primary competitive relationship explored is that between enforcers in the United States and enforcers in the European Union, but the article also accounts for antitrust having ‘gone global’, with the multiplication of antitrust jurisdictions and thus new entrants around the world