Requirements on Consumer Information about Product ... - ANEC

Consumer Information about PCF
environmental impacts: Such changes are difficult to be accounted for in LCA, since they
require a functioning information system on supply chain changes, which is not yet in place.
Furthermore, many supply chains are increasingly organised by highly flexible spot markets
which make direct contacts between supplier and customer unnecessary. Under such
conditions, it is hard to imagine a satisfactory flow of primary process information suitable for
LCA-applications.” Prakash 2008
As for LCA the acquisition of data on greenhouse gas emissions is time-consuming and costintensive.
The same problems concerning outdating of data and possibly fast changes of
supply chains occur. One advantage is that greenhouse gas emissions at present are highly
correlated to energy generation, which is generally covered with relatively good data
compared to other impact categories and processes. That way, at least secondary data are
available for many basic processes. For other processes, such as agriculture or food
processing only fragmentary data are available that are besides highly variable (depending
on farm size, farm equipment, storage of food etc.). The effort to gather representative
primary data on food production is high, especially as for agricultural products fast changes
of the supply chain occur often (e.g. due to weather changes, good or bad harvests) with
possibly high impacts on greenhouse gas emissions.
In general it is true that the PCF is subject to variances in the precision and reproducibility of
calculations. This comes from the different quality or sources of data used or the definition of
certain assumptions in the individual phases of the product‘s life cycle. Whether all of the
uncertainties and assumptions that arise can be remedied by an internationally standardised
methodology remains uncertain, if anything. The existence of PCRs would strongly support
the comparability of results of different products within one product group. This is something
that is of particular importance when communicating the PCF.
As for the calculation rules, there are still methodological questions to be solved and
consensus to be found among different existing approaches, e.g.:
• How to deal with storage of CO2e in products?
• How to deal with direct and indirect land use change?
• How to calculate greenhouse gas emissions for (partly) “green” electricity?
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