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

GROUP 3, SESSION A: LABELLING, CONSUMERS, DIET 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
82. Finnish carbon footprint protocol “Foodprint” for food products
Juha-Matti Katajajuuri * , Hannele Pulkkinen, Hanna Hartikainen, Kristoffer Krogerus, Merja Saarinen, Frans
Silvenius, Kirsi Usva, Heli Yrjänäinen
MTT Agrifood Research Finland, Responsible Food Chain – Better Consumer Well-being, FI 00790 Helsinki,
Finland Corresponding author. E-mail: juha-matti.katajajuuri@mtt.fi
In the Foodprint - research project harmonised methodology for assessing carbon footprints of food products
was developed in collaboration with the Finnish food sector in 2009-2012. Many international standards,
protocols and guides are published but no common approved standard nor communication method evaluating
food products’ climate impacts is available. In addition, the published ones are too generic and they do not
give practical instructions for companies to produce comparable carbon footprints.
However, international standardisation, developments and best practices on evaluating climate impacts of the
food products’ entire life cycle were taken into account when national specific guidelines were prepared.
Some of the most challenging issues tackled in the methodology and protocol work are described in this paper.
There are many situations in assessing carbon footprints where decisions are often done case by case. These
issues are critical as they affect comparability and the magnitude of carbon footprint results. Attributional
approach was selected as s starting point of the protocol. The methodology development work was carried
out as an iterative process between research, companies and other stakeholders to ensure practical methodology
and implementation.
To harmonise methodology and future carbon footprint assessments, detailed instructions were given to different
life cycle phases and many clear requirements have been established. All life cycle phases from raw
material extraction to waste treatment shall generally be included. Different requirements were also made for
cultivation and for animal production. Cut-off rules are also applied in the methodology and more detailed
instructions for their use are given. Capital goods are excluded from the system boundaries.
Present data quality requirements, particularly requirements on primary data, in current and draft international
guidelines are seen insufficient. Therefore, in the Foodprint protocol more detailed requirements were
applied separately for each life cycle phase. Detailed instructions were given to each life cycle phase whether
data shall be collected directly from a supply chain, or gathered from national statistics, databases etc., and
which are adequate data sources. The intention was to harmonise the data requirements from agricultural
phase in the protocol with the fairly comprehensive activity data, which is already collected by primary producers
for other purposes in Finland.
New updated emission factors were also developed. National emission factors for N2O emissions from agricultural
soils derived from field measurements were launched in the project to describe better national circumstances.
This means that new default will give considerable higher emissions to grains and vegetables
(outdoor) grown in open fields due to the northern conditions.
Another area of improvement and generation of defaults were national emission factors for different electricity
production types. The protocol proposes that specific emissions factors related to the actual electricity
supplier should be used. This means that when the production profile of the supplier is known (as in Finland
is the case by law), the new national defaults for different production types shall be used.
Different existing methodologies to include land use changes, especially deforestation, were also analysed
based on the Finnish case studies. Emissions resulting from land use change were proved to have a large
impact on the final carbon footprint of food products. Thus they shall be included in the assessment, and
presented separately from total results. The methodology and some practical guides are presented in the protocol
and additional material of the project.
It is seen that in the near future, when climate impacts are understood and tackled by companies and they
have suitable tools for that, this also directs proactive companies to develop more comprehensive methods, to
consider issues such as water and nutrient footprints.
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