Page 188 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

MODELING THE AGRI-FOOD INDUSTRY WITH LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT 173

site specificity because of the different nature of data and parameters. The
above mentioned literature describes some of the current efforts used to
study and face such issues. None of these approaches are yet mainstream
or are applicable to all agri-food products, but should be taken into consid-
eration, whenever possible, when performing such LCAs, in order to better
identify and quantify the effects of a category such as land use that largely
influences the global ecosystem.

7.2.4.2 Water Use

It is widely recognized that agricultural production is currently responsible for
a large part of the global consumption of freshwater use. Even though fresh-
water use is a primary environmental concern, only recently there has been
an increase in the study of aspects regarding the methodology for water use
analysis in LCA (Mila i Canals, et al. 2008; Pfister, et al. 2009).
Initially in LCA freshwater use was only really considered at the inventory
level by accounting for the amount of water withdrawn from the ground and
surface without considering rain water since LCA originated as a tool for wet
countries. A qualitative approach (water degradation), as opposed to quan-
titative (consumption), was then also introduced to report more meaningful
inventory data in order to assess how much the utility of the returned water is
impaired for either humans or ecosystems, as opposed to the effects of emis-
sions to the aquatic environment assessed in conventional LCA (e.g. eutrophi-
cation and ecotoxicity). Recently, when measuring input and output data for
all unit processes of the LCA, Boulay et al. (Boulay, et al. 2011) considered water
categories by source, quality parameter and user as a means to quantify the
elementary flows necessary for a subsequent evaluation the potential impacts
of the degradative use of water in terms of loss of water functionality (Bayart,
et al. 2010) for human users. Similarly Peters et al. (Peters, et al. 2010) when
performing hybrid LCA of Australian red meat production used a qualitative
classification of water use.
Recent approaches to the impact assessment of water use can be found in
(Boulay, et al. 2011; Pfister, et al 2009; Mila i Canals, et al. 2008). Since water foot-
print (WF) (Hoekstra & Chapagain, 2008) and virtual water (VW) (Allan, 1998)
methodologies are applicable to products and are also similar to water use
LCA methods at an inventory level, WF and VW are often used in conjunction
with LCA to better evaluate the impacts of freshwater use. Approaches using
modified LCA/WF/VW can be found in (Mila i Canals, et al. 2008; Pfister, et al.
2009; Ridoutt. & S. Pfister, 2010). In (Jefferies, et al. 2010) tea and margarine
production are considered using LCA and WF methodologies. The authors
point out how the well established databases and methodologies of LCA can
help typical WF methodologies, whereas the concept of consumed water (as
opposed to abstracted water) together with the methods of calculation of green
and blue water in the absence of specific local data can improve the overall
LCA estimations of the impacts of these agri-food products. Similarly Milä i
Canals et al. (Milä i Canals, et al. 2010) point out that WF accounting methods