Page 191 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

176 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT HANDBOOK

consuming project, but, according to our opinion, it is the most important chal-
lenge that the food industry should face in its product sustainability mission.
Nowadays very few companies are moving in this direction.
Unilever has been systematically using LCA, for many years, in three ways:
product innovation, product category analysis and strategic innovation. In this
company, LCA is used to design new products, compare new and existing ones
and measure the difference in their respective environmental profile, in order
to help guide product developers to support the launch of new products and
to inform consumers of the environmental performance of their products. Also
the company conducts LCAs on product categories or portfolio (as for Knorr's
life cycle greenhouse gases assessment) (Mila i Canals, et al. 2011) to raise envi-
ronmental awareness and to identify improvement opportunities. Also LCA
is used to help understand the company's environmental impact scaling their
business to the world economy. This is another example of systematic use of
LCA, not limiting it absolutely to packaging, but tailoring it to the whole pack-
aged food, or to brand-portfolio analysis, which is also very helpful in setting
up corporate databases.
As can be seen in (Notarnicola, et al. 2008) regarding LCA of reverse osmosis
systems for the enrichment of wine, the systematic use of LCA can also lead to
technical improvements of the assessed product/technology. This is possible
when a large quantity of data and experiments are collected in the inventory
phase. At the same time economical issues can be faced by coupling LCA with
life cycle costing (LCC) in the food industry (Settanni, et al. 2010). The social
pillar of sustainability is always quite difficult to add to the LCA framework of
the food industry but different methods have been developed, as described by
Kruse (Kruse, 2010).
The ongoing diffusion of EPD in the agri-food industry is making the use of
Life Cycle thinking and Life Cycle Assessment widespread. The EPD system
at the moment has set PCRs for twenty five foods in the food and drink sector,
involving meat, jams, processed liquid milk, fish, fruit juices, kiwi fruits, beer,
wine, bottled mineral water, beverage cartons, virgin olive oil and its fraction,
dairy products, eggs, groats, meal and wheat pellets and other cereals, pasta,
soup, sauces, drinks and tobacco products. The Italian companies that have
already received EPDs for their products are Granarolo (milk and dairy prod-
ucts), Barilla (pasta and biscuits), San Benedetto (mineral water). These com-
panies are utilizing LCA to assess the environmental profile of their products,
in order to gain labels for marketing use. The above mentioned systematic
approach of LCA should be the next step that should be followed by the whole
agri-food sector.
Referring to carbon labels, in 2007 the Tesco supermarket group announced
they would develop a carbon footprint for all their products; up until today,
there are about 100 products that have been labeled, including orange juice and
potatoes. Sapporo breweries, Walker's crisps, and Casino are a few examples
of companies that are labeling their products with carbon labels. However,
the use of carbon footprint has the risk of minimizing the role of very impor-
tant factors such as human toxicity and ecotoxicity, reducing the importance