LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 7A: CONSUMERS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Parallel session 7a: Consumers
572
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
Communication of LCA results in the French environmental
experimentation context: user-friendly web-based tool for the case of
coffee
Simone Pedrazzini 1,* , Carole Dubois 1 , Raphael Halloran 1 , Christophe Porté 1 , Sandi Northey 2 , Urs Schenker 3 ,
Sebastien Humbert 1
1 Quantis, Parc scientifique EPFL, Bât. D, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
2 Nestlé, Av. Nestlé 55, 1800 Vevey, Switzerland
3 Nestlé Research Center, Vers-chez-les-Blanc, 1000 Lausanne, Switzerland
Corresponding author. E-mail: simone.pedrazzini@quantis-intl.com
ABSTRACT
In the French environmental experimentation context, the communication of life cycle assessment (LCA) results to the general public
is one of the main challenges of this initiative. The Nescafé® LCA Communication Tool is presented as an example of user-friendly
interactive solution to communicate the results of an LCA made on a cup of coffee. The main advantages of this kind of communication
are the limited amount of information on display at a time, allowing analysis of complex results of an LCA in a simple and
engaging way, as well as creating interactivity which attracts the attention of the user.
Keywords: French labelling experimentation, Grenelle, communication, web-based tool, coffee, multi-indicators
1. Introduction
Since the 1 st of July 2011 a French experimentation on environmental labelling of consumer products is
on-going. This experimentation results from the “Grenelle de l’Environnement” initiative, promoted by the
French Parliament (Cros et al., 2010). The objective of the Grenelle initiative is to inform consumers about
the environmental performance of consumer products throughout their life cycle, as a choice criterion when
making a purchase.
One of the main challenges of this initiative is the communication of life cycle assessment (LCA) results
to the general public; that is moving from scientific report based results to simple and user-friendly means of
communication. In this context, Nestlé contracted Quantis to help develop a web-based tool for Nescafé® -
one of the products participating in the French pilot. The result is the Nescafé® LCA Communication Tool,
which presents the results of an LCA made on a cup of coffee. The tool is a Nestlé proprietary initiative intended
to help communicate LCA results and understanding to the general public. A key aim was to develop
an interactive web-based tool that displays results in an attractive and user-friendly way (http://nescafe.outilacv.com/).
2. Methods
The full life cycle impacts of a cup of spray dried soluble coffee are based on Humbert et al., (2009) and
are assessed for the climate change, water consumption and land occupation impact categories, using IM-
PACT 2002+ (Jolliet et al., 2003, as adapted by Humbert et al., 2012). The results are compliant with the
standard developed for the French experimentation (BPX 30-323 2011) and follow the recommendations
provided by the specific working group concerning food products leaded by ADEME-AFNOR.
3. Results and discussion
The Nescafé® LCA Communication Tool allows consumers to analyse the results per life cycle stage and
per indicator. Consumers can “navigate” through the results and discover for themselves the environmental
impacts of the different life cycle stages on the selected environmental indicator. This allows displaying
complex results of an LCA in a simple and engaging way by having only a limited amount of information on
display at a time.
The home page presents the seven life cycle stages assessed (see Figure 1). The user can both click on
each life cycle stage to analyse its contribution for the three environmental indicators or click on a single
environmental indicator to analyse the contribution of each life cycle stage (see Figures 2, 3, and 4).