Page 189 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

174 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT HANDBOOK

help to provide a richer picture of the total water consumption associated with
growing of broccoli when assessing freshwater use impacts in LCA of such
products in different parts of Europe. Some of the above mentioned authors
when dealing with the impact of water use do not consider the green water
component (as opposed to blue or grey water) and claim that it should be
included in the land use impact assessment; others (Wiedemann & McGahan,
2010) argue that it should be treated as a separate water resource. Such an
aspect still seems to be an open issue.
As pointed out in (Pfister, et al. 2010) water use and land use are closely corre-
lated and hence are both affected by the site specificity of the assessment data.
Authors of (Pfister, et al. 2009) developed a method for assessing the environ-
mental impacts, performed according to the framework of the Eco-indicator-99
assessment methodology, of freshwater consumption for cotton-textile pro-
duction using regionalized characterization factors. Such an approach is also
applied to agri-food water-intensive products such as vegetables and fruit
(Pfister, et al. 2008) in different countries; this work clearly shows how results
depend on irrigation requirements of the product. Most importantly the work
indicates that more accurate specific regionalized results can contrast with
average national impact values. Site specificity is also emphasiszed in the
work by Hanafiah et al. (Hanafiah, et al. 2011). The derived characterization fac-
tors for water consumption and global warming based on freshwater fish spe-
cies extinction can differ by orders of magnitude depending in the river being
considered. Other recent approaches that consider regionalization aspects in
water use can be found in (Bayart, et al. 2010; Boulay, et al. 2011).
In summary, work regarding water use is, in general, constantly evolving
and has by no means reached a standard to be commonly used for all agri-food
products. Nonetheless, the above cited approaches should be taken into con-
sideration, whenever possible, by tailoring them to the specific agri-food LCAs
that involve water use in order to improve the overall results.

7.3 Role of the Food Industry: Some Examples

As far as we know, LCA was born in the Food and Drink sector when in
1969 Harry E. Teasley of the Coca Cola Company commissioned and REPA
(Resource Environmental Profile Analysis) study to gain more information
regarding the energy, material and environmental consequences of the entire
life cycle of a package from the extraction of raw materials to disposal (Hunt &
Franklin, 1996). Since then, but especially in the nineties, international compa-
nies, at different levels, have considered the role of LCA especially for packag-
ing issues. Kraft Jacobs Suchard, for instance, introduced LCA at the beginning
of the 1990s when dealing with the improvement of packaging of roasted coffee
(Frankl & F. Rubik, 2000). Nestle focused its policy of reducing environmental
impacts of packaging on four elements, namely reducing materials used, use of
materials with low environmental impact (renewable sources), using recycled
materials and encouraging recycling. Among the tools that Nestle has been