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
171. Guidelines for addressing environmental and social LCA within
Quebec’s food processing industry – Part 2: socio-economic aspects
Jean-Michel Couture 1,* , Catherine Brodeur 1 , Jean-Pierre Revéret 1,2 , Julie-Anne Chayer 3 , Rosie Saad 3
1 Groupe AGECO, 2014 Cyrille-Duquet suite 307, Quebec, QC, G1N 4N6, Canada, 2 UQAM, Department of
Strategy, Social and Environmental Responsibility, Suite R-3555, École des sciences de la gestion, QC, H2X
3X2, Canada, and Groupe AGECO, 3 Quantis, 395 Laurier Ouest, Montreal, QC, H2V 2K3, Canada, Corresponding
author E-mail: jean-michel.couture@groupeageco.ca
The growing demand of consumers for environmentally friendly products and socially responsible practices
is becoming a major issue for the food processing industry. As new regulations are enacted and responsible
procurement practices policies become widespread among large retailers, processors have to adapt and provide
credible information on the environmental and social impacts induced by their products and activities.
In order to support the Quebec’s (Canada) food processing industry facing these new challenges, guidelines
have been produced to allow processors operating in one of the five participating sectors (dairy, poultry,
juice and drinks, processed vegetables and animal feed) to conduct Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) over their
enterprise.
Although the LCA approach has become to be known as one of the most effective and rigorous method to
assess the impacts of a product over its entire life-cycle, it traditionally focuses on environmental impacts,
thus failing to provide a complete assessment of the product’ sustainability. Doing so would require taking
also into account it social and economic impacts. Based on recent theoretical developments, these guidelines
propose a Sustainability-LCA framework to assess the social and economic impacts as well as the environmental
ones.
Drawn from the UNEP’s Guidelines for social life cycle assessment of products (UNEP 2009), the Social-
LCA part of these Guidelines provides a fully operational framework in which impact sub-categories have
been related to a set of readily measurable socio-economic indicators. Although the framework relies on a
common and standardised assessment methodology, it also allows for adaptations to take place in order to
take into account sectors’ specificities. More fundamentally, by clarifying the S-LCA’s terminology, steps of
realisation and the indicators’ selection criteria, these Guidelines enhanced this tool’s methodological foundations
to facilitate its use in other contexts and for other subjects.
In sum, in addition of being one of the first attempts to develop an integrated assessment framework to perform
a Social and Environmental LCA, these Guidelines propose a practical, simplified and sector-oriented
S-LCA methodology that will facilitate the conduct of such an assessment in the participating food processing
sectors and beyond.
References
UNEP/SETAC, 2009. Guidelines for Social Life Cycle Assessment of Products. United Nations Environment
Programme. Paris.
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