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

PARALLEL SESSION 7C: FOOD CHAIN AND FOOD WASTE 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
shows through strongly in the weighted water footprint. This impact assessment method has, of course, location-sensitivity
built into it; it may be that if regionalised methods been used for other categories (notably
eutrophication), the influence of place would have shown in those too.
Comparing the results obtained for the different cases with the results of the sensitivity analysis suggests
that, in this case at least, yield and agricultural practice are stronger drivers of the environmental burden of
food production than is time of supply. In such situations a strong focus on “seasonality” in sustainable food
provisioning is unlikely to deliver large environmental benefits.
That said, the scoping phase of the work highlighted challenges facing any assessment of the environmental
impacts associated with a shift towards “seasonal food consumption”. If such a shift occurred at any
significant scale, it would presumably involve a complex adjustment of food purchasing and consumption
patterns. Given the association of seasonal food provisioning with economic and social benefits, understanding
the environmental implications of that remains a desirable aim. Future work should look beyond single
food items. In doing so, differences in understandings of seasonal food, modern health norms (e.g. “5-aday”)
and 21 st -century consumer expectations 8 must be taken into account in order to identify a realistic consumption
or purchasing pattern to assess.
6. References
Brooks, M., Foster, C., Holmes M., Wiltshire J., 2011. Does consuming seasonal foods benefit the environment? British Nutrition
Bulletin, 36, 449-453.
Brunel University, 2009. Greenhouse Gas Impacts of Food Retailing - report of project FO 0405. Defra, London.
Dibb, S., Collins, J. and Mayo, E., 2006. Season’s Promise: an enjoyable way to tackle climate change. National Consumer Council.
Evans, J., n.d. Cold storage of food. Review of available information on energy consumption and energy savings options. FRPERC,
University of Bristol.
Foster. C., McMeekin, A., Mylan, J., 2012. The entanglement of consumer expectations and (eco) innovation sequences. Technology
Analysis and Strategic Management, 24, 391-405.
Freidberg, S., 2009. Fresh, a Perishable History. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
Hoekstra, A.Y. and Chapagain, A.K., 2008. Globalization of water: Sharing the planet's freshwater resources, Blackwell Publishing,
Oxford, UK.
Kovach, J., Petzoldt, C., Degnil, J. et al., 1992. A method to measure the environmental impact of pesticides. New York's Food and
Life Sci. Bull. 139, 1-8.
Pfister, S., Koehler, A. and Hellweg, S., 2009. Assessing the environmental impacts of freshwater consumption in LCA. Environmental
Science and Technology 43, 4098-4104.
Ridoutt, B.G., Pfister, S., 2010. A revised approach to water footprinting to make transparent the impacts of consumption and production
on global freshwater scarcity. Global Environmental Change - Human and Policy Dimensions, 20 (1), 113-120.
Terry,L.A., Mena, C., Williams, A., Jenney, N., Whitehead, P., 2011. Fruit and vegetable resource maps: final report of project
RSC008, WRAP, Banbury.
Williams, A.G., Pell, E., Webb, J., Tribe, E., Evans, D., Moorhouse, E. & Watkiss, P., 2009. Comparative Life Cycle Assessment of
Food Commodities Procured for UK Consumption through a Diversity of Supply Chains - Final Report for Defra Project
FO0103. Defra, London.
8 For a discussion of the co-evolution of consumer expectations and food products, see Foster et al., (2012) or Freidberg (2009)
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