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

GROUP 5, SESSION B: FOOD PRODUCTS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
842
124. How to adapt generic LCI data to be reliant on the original
recipe: case study of a biscuit
Roberto Bellino 1 , Marie Vuaillat 1 , Stéphane Le Pochat 1,* , Laure Vidal 2 , Stéphanie Capdeville 2 , Sylvie
Martinel 3
1 EVEA, 56 bd. de la Fraternité, 44100 Nantes, France, 2 Eco-Concevoir, 23 Allée des Marronniers, 34130
Mauguio, France, 3 Nutrition & Santé, BP 106, 31250 Revel, France, Corresponding author. E-mail:
s.lepochat@evea-conseil.com
In 2011, EVEA and Eco-Concevoir carried out an LCA study of a biscuit for NUTRITION & SANTÉ, a
leading company in Europe for health and organic agrifood products. It engaged in a global ecodesign process,
carrying out several LCAs, of which one was the LCA of a biscuit.
Input data for LCIA were the different ingredients of the recipes and LCA practitioners had to deal with the
lack of data or generic or inconsistent data from ecoinvent and LCA about specific ingredients or processes.
To make LCIA results consistent as far as possible we had to adapt data from ecoinvent. For agricultural
data, we developed a procedure to create the required data (Fig. 1, Table 1). Once the inventory was performed,
we conducted the life cycle impact assessment of the biscuit. We compared results of the LCA of the
biscuit with generic data and adapted data.
Adapting data for cultural processes in our case study increased the impacts by 10-75% on 7 impact categories
(Fig. 2). If we assume an average uncertainty of 30% on each indicator, these increases are significant on
3 indicators: water consumption, eutrophication and acidification. These changes are mainly due to adaptation
of yield which is lower in organic cultures than in conventional ones and introduction of irrigation for
the specific country where sugarcane is produced. We can also note that the adaptation leads to a decrease of
22% of the impact of the product on water ecotoxicity. It can be easily explained by the adaptation of pesticides
use that was removed for organic cultures. However, this change cannot be considered as significant
regarding the high level of uncertainty on this indicator.
It is interesting to note that even in a cradle to gate system (including packaging fabrication and end-of-life,
biscuit production, distribution, etc.) the parameters related to agricultural step can have significant influence
on the final results. In the case of generic agricultural data adaptation, LCA practitioners should pay attention
with priority to main parameters (here, yield, irrigation and pesticides) and main ingredients.
References
Gopinath, K.A., 2011. Organic Sesame Production. Technical Bulletin, Central Research Institute for Dryland
Agriculture, Santoshnagar, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh, India. 34p.
Gudoshnikov Organic Sugar, 2001. Niche Commodity In The Mainstream Market, FO LICHT International
Sugar and Sweetener Report, Vol 133, No 22 of 24th July 2001.
Nemecek, T., Kägi, T. Life cycle inventories of agricultural production systems. Data v2.0 (2007), ecoinvent
report n°15, December 2007.
Toolseeram Ramjeawon, 2004. Life Cycle Assessment of Cane-Sugar on the Island of Mauritius, Int J. of
LCA, 9 (4), pp. 254-260.