New method to measure environmental impact of food

Foundation Earth recently published a new method to assess the environmental impact of food and drink products.

The methodology, which proposes an improved version of the European Commission’s Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) marks a huge milestone in the world of ecolabelling, bringing us one step closer to harmonised system that can be used across Europe and beyond. The new Life Cycle Assessment method, is going open source to increase transparency and allow for large uptake globally.

The method proposes a robust and data-driven environmental scoring system which allows for the comparison between different food chains producing the same type of food, enabling businesses to transform their food systems to reach sustainability targets, whilst providing consumers with the clear and credible information needed to make more sustainable buying choices through ecolabels.

Improving the current European Product Environmental Footprint method (PEF)

Although widely accepted, the existing PEF system has been associated with some challenges, the two main barriers being:

• Its inability to accept primary data from specific supply chains – meaning that different food chains producing the same food cannot be compared.
• Much of the PEF process has not been specifically defined. This means that two PEF analyses from different companies could end up with varying results due to different interpretations of the rules.

The Foundation Earth method addresses these weaknesses and offers substantially improved levels of information over the previous PEF system, providing clear guidance for the delivery of standardised PEF assessments.

The updated method allows for the assessment of the 16 environmental impact indicators under PEF including: Climate change, Ozone depletion, Human toxicity (cancer), Human toxicity (non-cancer), Particulate matter, Ionising radiation, Photochemical ozone formation, Acidification, Eutrophication (terrestrial), Eutrophication (freshwater), Ecotoxicity (freshwater), Eutrophication (marine), Land use, Water use, Resource use (minerals, metals), Resource use (fossils).

The new methodology in short:

• Proposes a harmonised PEF-friendly LCA methodology to calculate the environmental footprint of food products.
• Builds on existing developments, PEFCRs, PEF Guidance, Food Drink Europe guidance.
• Designed to allow for the comparison of grades between different food categories and within the same category.
• Provides guidance on primary data sources required to run the LCA based on the type of food producer.
• Provides guidance on preferred secondary data sources.
• Proposes a simplified approach to the PEF data quality assessment to allow for widespread use.

The new method is developed in collaboration with Blonk Consultants, DIL German Institute of Food Technologies (Deutsches Institut für Lebensmitteltechnik e.V.) and supported by EIT Food.

Foundation-earth.org