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

GROUP 2, SESSION A: CARBON OR WATER FOOTPRINTS, SOIL, BIODIVERSITY 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
43. Assessment of carbon footprint methodologies used to evaluate
Mediterranean horticultural production in standard multi-tunnel
greenhouses
Rubén Beltrán-Palafox 1 , Julia Martínez-Blanco 2,* , Joan Rieradevall 2,3 , Assumpció Antón 4,5 , Pere Muñoz 5
1 Joint European Master in Environmental Sciences (JEMES), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).
08193 Bellaterra Barcelona, Spain, 2 Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat
Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain, 3 Chemical Engineering Department,
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain, 4 Departament d’Enginyeria
Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). 43007 Tarragona, Spain, 5 Institute of Research and Technology
in Agrifood Sector (IRTA), Environmental Horticulture. 08348 Cabrils, Barcelona, Spain, Corresponding
author. E-mail: julia.martinez@uab.cat
Evaluating the environmental behaviour of the agri-food products has become an essential issue, not only to
avoid the pollution, but also to reduce potential threats to human health and to assure the provision of better
quality food. Furthermore, novel demanding consumers are concerned about this information and they are
also aware of the possible carbon footprint inflicted by their consumption habits. Carbon footprint has become
a popular tool to measure the impact of products in the environment because it is easy to use and understand
and the study times are shorter and cheaper than other environmental methodologies. One drawback
of this approach is the different methodologies that simultaneously exist and that provide different, and
sometimes contradictory, results regarding the environmental impact of products (Brenton et al., 2010).
This project aims to compare three well-known carbon footprint methodologies: The PAS2050:2011, the
French Bilan Carbone and the WBCSD’s GHG Protocol (see Table 1). The comparison highlights the different
results due to variations in the procedure of each carbon footprint methodology when it is applied to agricultural
systems (i.e. including capital goods, allocation criteria, inventory origin, system boundaries and
expansion, carbon sinks, land use and/or transportation approaches among the most important variations).
The study evaluates the environmental impact of five horticultural products: tomato, lettuce, beans, green
peas and cucumber. The scope of the experiment also includes the evaluation of two fertilising treatments,
including the application of mineral fertilisers and compost (Martínez-Blanco, 2011). The stages assessed
include the fertilisers production and transport, the cultivation stage and the greenhouse phase.
The exclusion of capital goods represents a 4-16% decrease in the total CF when compared to the footprint
measured by the GHG protocol and the Bilan Carbone. The inclusion of indirect processes (i.e. commuting
employees) and the capital goods generate an increase of 12-50% in the CF. Additionally, when including
the capital goods and adding a commercialisation stage (that includes packaging and transportation towards
the retail markets) the CF suffers an increase of 6-40% from the one obtained under the PAS 2050 parameters.
The packaging sub-stage provides 99% of the total impact within the commercialisation stage. These
variations could be avoided if the system boundaries are extended to the end user stage, as suggested by the
Bilan Carbone methodology; and including indirect processes, as considered by the GHG protocol. Paradoxically,
still very few changes among the methodologies provide relevant variations (of more than 5%) in
the carbon footprint calculations.
References
Brenton, P., Edwards-Jones, G., & Friis Jensen, M. Carbon Footprints and Food Systems. The World Bank
Publications, 2010.
Martínez-Blanco, J. Muñoz, P., Antón A., Rieradevall, J. Assessment of tomato Meditarrean production in
open-filed and standard multi-tunnel greenhouse, with compost or mineral fertilisers, from an agricultural
and environmental standpoint, 2011. J Clean. Prod. 19, 985-997.
Martínez-Blanco, J. Rieradevall, J., Muñoz, P., Pascua, P., Oliver-Solà, J., Gabarrell, X., Gasol, C., 2012.
Comparison of life cycle methodologies for the GHG assessment: CF and LCA in the horticulture sector .
Int. J LCA.
717