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

GROUP 6, SESSION B: METHODS, TOOLS, DATABASES 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
163. Life cycle sustainability assessment of fertilising options
Julia Martínez-Blanco 1,* , Annekatrin Lehmann 2,3 , Pere Muñoz 4 , Assumpció Antón 5 , Marzia Traverso 2 , Joan
Rieradevall 1,6 , Matthias Finkbeiner 2
1 Institute of Environmental Science and Technology (ICTA), Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB),
08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain, 2 Department of Environmental Technology, Technische Universität
Berlin, Office Z1, 10623 Berlin, Germany, 3 Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis,
Karlsruhe Institute for Technology, 76021 Karlsruhe, Germany, 4 Institute of Research and Technology in
Agrifood Sector (IRTA), Environmental Horticulture, 08348 Cabrils, Barcelona, Spain, 5 Departament
d’Enginyeria Química, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), 43007 Tarragona, Spain, 6 Chemical Engineering
Department, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain, Corresponding
author. E-mail: julia.martinez@uab.cat
Sustainability describes a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability
of future generations to meet their own needs (Brutland report, 1987). It comprises three “pillars” – environment,
economy and society– which are addressed by Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, LCSA,
(Finkbeiner et al., 2010). The study aims to overview the three dimensions related to mineral fertilisers and
compost, from a life cycle perspective and considering a real case study –the tomato production in the Mediterranean
region (Martínez-Blanco et al., 2011).
The unit of available nitrogen in the short-medium term (1kg N) from the applied fertilisers to the tomato
crops is the functional unit considered here. Fig. 1 shows the system boundaries of the two systems compared:
compost and two mineral fertilisers (nitric acid and potassium nitrate). For the present study, fertiliser
production and transport are taken into account as well as those stages of the cultivation being different between
the two fertilising options, i.e. fertirrigation emissions and application works.
Data sources for the environmental and the economic assessment are mainly referred in previous works from
the authors, whereas social evaluation uses sector data from Social Hotspot DataBase, Gabi 5, governmental
and non-governmental organisations (such as ILO and OECD), corporate websites, sustainability reports,
national statistics and literature.
Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is following the obligatory classification and characterisation
phases defined by the ISO 14044. Ten mid-point impact categories are considered as well as an energy flow
indicator. For Life Cycle costing (LCC) we select three internal costs, which are involving all the chain process
costs. Regarding Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA), upstream processes and mainstream processes
of the production chain are taken into account. For the former, the indicators are referred to the stakeholder
“worker”, “local community”, “society” and “consumer” – as proposed in the S-LCA guidelines (UNEP,
2009) – as well as a specific stakeholder related to the citizens collecting the waste. Social impacts related to
upstream processes have so far not been considered in the few existing SLCA case studies. In our study some
social indicators addressing the stakeholder “worker” are included for the upstream processes in the life cycle
of compost and mineral fertiliser production (such as transport, energy, water, etc.). The number of working
time which is spent on each unit process is used to score the relevance of each process in the product
chain.
Life Cycle Sustainability Dashboard (LCSD) – an adaptation of the Dashboard of Sustainability, developed
to assess environmental, economic and social life cycle impacts of a product (Finkbeiner et al., 2010) - was
here selected to present and to compare the sustainability performance of the case studies. LCSD is using
software that allows represent a certain number of indicators for LCA, LCC and SLCA, and their values, in
order to be able to interpret the results.
References
Finkbeiner, M., Schau, E.M., Lehmann, A., Traverso, M., 2010. Towards life cycle sustainability assessment.
Sustainability 2, 3309-3322.
Martínez-Blanco, J., Muñoz, P., Antón, A., Rieradevall, R., 2011. Assessment of tomato Mediterranean production
in open-field and in standard multi-tunnel greenhouse with compost or mineral fertilisers from an
agricultural and environmental standpoint. J. Clean. Prod. 19, 985-997.
UNEP, 2009. Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products, UNEP-SETAC Life-Cycle Initiative,
Paris.
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