Environmental impacts of food consumption in Europe

作者：Bruno Notarnicola, Giuseppe Tassielli, Pietro Alexander Renzulli, Valentina Castellani, Serenella Sala · 发表于：Journal of Cleaner Production · 年份：2016 · DOI：10.1016/j.jclepro.2016.06.080 · 被引用次数：569 · 研究领域：Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact、Environmental Impact and Sustainability、Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability

Food consumption is amongst the main drivers of environmental impacts. On one hand, there is the need to fulfil a fundamental human need for nutrition, and on the other hand this poses critical threats to the environment. In order to assess the environmental impact of food consumption, a lifecycle assessment (LCA)-based approach has been applied to a basket of products, selected as being representative of EU consumption. A basket of food products was identified as representative of the average food and beverage consumption in Europe, reflecting the relative importance of the products in terms of mass and economic value. The products in the basket are: pork, beef, poultry, milk, cheese, butter, bread, sugar, sunflower oil, olive oil, potatoes, oranges, apples, mineral water, roasted coffee, beer and pre-prepared meals. For each product in the basket, a highly disaggregated inventory model was developed based on a modular approach, and built using statistical data. The environmental impact of the average food consumption of European citizens was assessed using the International Reference Life Cycle Data System (ILCD) methodology. The overall results indicate that, for most of the impact categories, the consumed foods with the highest environmental burden are meat products (beef, pork and poultry) and dairy products (cheese, milk and butter). The agricultural phase is the lifecycle stage that has the highest impact of all the foods in the basket, due to the contribution of agron...