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A review of methodological issues affecting LCA of novel food products

  • LCA FOR FOOD PRODUCTS
  • Published:
The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment Aims and scope Submit manuscript

An Erratum to this article was published on 19 March 2010

Abstract

Background, aim, and scope

Life cycle assessment (LCA) was initially developed to answer questions about the environmental impact of available products and services, implying that the product system under study was possible to investigate in detail; however, if new products or processes are to be evaluated, several complications occur. So, this paper aims to review the methodological issues that need careful attention when LCA is used for evaluating novel products, processes, or production from an environmental standpoint, as well as to draw some recommendations related to the best approach when dealing with them.

Materials and methods

An initial brainstorming on the identification of methodological issues when applying the standard LCA methodology for the evaluation of novel products allowed the identification of the relevant aspects, on which a literature review was then performed. Periodical meetings took place for discussion of the significant references and an agreed approach validated through three case studies on the food sector was defined as result of the procedure.

Results

Five elements were identified as relevant for the specific application of LCA to novel products: type of LCA, functional unit, system boundaries, data gathering, and scenarios development. An analysis of the state of the art of the LCA methodology concerning each of them led to the definition of the recommended approach:

  • Type of LCA: prospective attributional LCA.

  • Functional unit (FU): physical FU or the inclusion of the economic dimension in the FU.

  • Scenarios development: future perspective of scenarios is required, although the particular method for scenarios development will depend on the aim of the study.

  • System boundaries: system expansion when possible and exclusion of those steps that are not affected.

  • Data gathering: specific data for the foreground system, while average data—but checking the suitability of using actual data—for the background system.

Discussion

The recommended approach was described through three case studies related to food products and processing. All were comparative studies, with the common element of including novel products (such as the production of new products from by-products) or novel processes (such as membrane technology or high pressure processing).

Conclusions

This paper has, in our opinion, helped in cleaning the area of the application of LCA to novel systems in particular related to food products and food processing which is an area of great development in the last years. The working procedure defined and applied here has worked fluently allowing the identification of the key methodological elements of an LCA and the associated state of the art, together with the validation through different case studies. The general application of our approach is difficult to assess; however, we feel confident regarding the recommendations proposed here and we hope they can be of use for other LCA users.

Recommendations and perspectives

We recommend using the approach defined here in order to check its applicability to other industrial sectors. By doing so, both us and other LCA users will benefit from the methodological improvements of this environmental management tool.

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Notes

  1. The author named his approach Dynamic LCA, considering that "dynamic does not necessarily mean that the development of the product and background system is modelled continuously, but rather it means that a future state of the system is modelled considering the future characteristics of the background and the model system" (Pehnt 2006).

  2. Schols et al. (1990) described the isolation and characterization of a cell-wall polysaccharide from the liquefaction of apple juice, which are called modified hairy regions. Its beneficial uses are still under research and the possible replaced products are not yet identified. As a result, this product was disregarded and excluded in all the scenarios.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been carried within the framework of two EU-6FP-funded projects: Novel Processing Methods for the Production and Distribution of High-Quality and Safe Foods (NovelQ; ref: FOOD-CT-2005-015710) and Reducing food processing waste (REPRO; ref: FOOD-CT-2005-006922). Dr. Hospido acknowledges the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science for financial support during her postdoctoral stay at SIK (Jose Castillejo Programme) as well as the Xunta de Galicia for her postdoctoral fellow position (Isidro Parga Pondal Programme).

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Author notes

  1. Almudena Hospido

    Present address: Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Santiago de Compostela, 15782, Santiago de Compostela, Spain

Authors and Affiliations

  1. SIK AB, The Swedish Institute for Food and Biotechnology, Box 5401, 402 29, Gothenburg, Sweden

    Almudena Hospido, Jennifer Davis, Johanna Berlin & Ulf Sonesson

Authors
  1. Almudena Hospido
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  2. Jennifer Davis
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  3. Johanna Berlin
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  4. Ulf Sonesson
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Almudena Hospido.

Additional information

Responsible editor: Niels Jungbluth

An erratum to this article can be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11367-010-0168-3

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Hospido, A., Davis, J., Berlin, J. et al. A review of methodological issues affecting LCA of novel food products. Int J Life Cycle Assess 15, 44–52 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-009-0130-4

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