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A Model of Simplified LCA for Agri-Food SMEs

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Product-Oriented Environmental Management Systems (POEMS)

Abstract

This Chapter describes and discusses the approach for identifying a simplified life cycle assessment (LCA) model suited for SMEs in the agri-food sector, addressing both the supply (developments of methods and tools) and demand (what stakeholders desire from a life cycle tool) side of the simplification problem. As far as the demand side is concerned, building on the results of the analysis carried out in Chap. 5, a literature review was carried out, aimed at identifying and characterising already existing simplified approaches and tools. On the supply side, the results of the review were crosschecked with the main outcomes of a survey about the need for simplification, the stakeholders of interest and their needs. This allowed the identification of some criteria for identifying the suitable simplified tool, which was subsequently selected by applying decision making methodologies belonging to the family of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory. This process resulted in the choice of eVerdEE. The validation of this choice is described in Chap. 7, through the application of this tool to a case study and its parallel analysis with the results of a detailed LCA.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    A, B and C indicates the degree of seriousness of an environmental impact (from A—serious—to C—not significant).

  2. 2.

    X = great; Y = medium; Z = insignificant quantity.

  3. 3.

    In this survey, four categories of stakeholders were addressed, namely: public authorities; business (industry, retailers); NGOs (incl. consumer associations), and R&D programmers (national funding organisations and research institutes). To get relevant information, questions were targeted to selected stakeholders, using both interviews and questionnaires. In total, 25 interviews were conducted which were distributed among the stakeholder groups. The questionnaire was sent out to 220 stakeholder representatives; however, the response rate was only 6 % of which 70 % represented businesses. For the purposes of the present report (the development of a simplified LCA approach for SMEs), the results of two stakeholders’ categories were considered: business and consumers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Economic Studies, University G. d’Annunzio, Viale Pindaro, 42, 65127, Pescara, Italy

    Ioannis Arzoumanidis, Andrea Raggi & Luigia Petti

  2. LCA and Ecodesign, ENEA, Via Martiri di Monte Sole, 4, 40129, Bologna, Italy

    Alessandra Zamagni

  3. Department of Informatics, King’s College, Strand Building, London, WC2R 2LS, UK

    Daniele Magazzeni

Authors
  1. Ioannis Arzoumanidis
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  2. Alessandra Zamagni
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  3. Andrea Raggi
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  4. Luigia Petti
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  5. Daniele Magazzeni
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Andrea Raggi .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. , Department SEA, University of Messina, Piazza S. Pugliatti 1, Messina, 98121, Italy

    Roberta Salomone

  2. , Department of Economics and Business, University of Catania, Corso Italia 55, Catania, 95128, Italy

    Maria Teresa Clasadonte

  3. , Department of Management & Information T, University of Salerno, Via Ponte Don Melillo, Fisciano, 84084, Salerno, Italy

    Maria Proto

  4. , Department of Economic Studies, The G. d'Annunzio University, Viale Pindaro 42, Pescara, 65127, Italy

    Andrea Raggi

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Arzoumanidis, I., Zamagni, A., Raggi, A., Petti, L., Magazzeni, D. (2013). A Model of Simplified LCA for Agri-Food SMEs. In: Salomone, R., Clasadonte, M., Proto, M., Raggi, A. (eds) Product-Oriented Environmental Management Systems (POEMS). Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6116-2_6

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