Regional environmental life cycle assessment for improving food chain sustainability

Current LCA methodologies employed to assess the intensity of environmental impacts lack a regional view, even though the sensitivity of the receiving environment is important in determining the specific levels of risks. This book seeks to redress the balance and develop a globally applicable, affordable and feasible approach to determine differentiated sets of possible impacts with higher environmental burdens derived from food supply chain processes. To this end, the earth’s land surface is divided into so-called “ecoregions”, defined by their specific characteristics such as soil, climate, and topography/physiography, and associated with the relevant risks for each ecoregion. The use of ecoregions and respective environmental risks can help enterprises recognize the environmental effect of their products but also help improve the reliability of comparisons between LCA results in different regions.