Food LCA

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) for the food and drink sector

Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) provides a means to assess the emissions, production, consumption and waste characteristics of products from initial design through to use and end of life. LCA is a particularly powerful way of measuring the likely impacts of specific products. It has been used by a number of food and drink organisations. An initial high profile LCA study by Unilever that obtained significant news coverage was the publication of the Sustainable Pea. Using this as an example of a case study it is clear that communicating life cycle based approaches to product development can give customers a greater understanding of your business goals.

The Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) is a analysis of the resources and emissions a specific product utilises and produces in a life time. Although LCA and LCI can be incredibly complex and require huge amounts of data, small companies can find them an incredibly powerful tool in developing new products and ideas. Increasingly the environmental fate of products will result in significant cost and LCA will become an essential tool in the development of products. In this section we provide a simplified explanation of LCA and LCI; and, we will provide information that will allow the application of aspects of these processes within the food and drink sector using established research on product life cycles.