Archive for the ‘Life Cycle Analysis’ Category

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What Is a Sustainability Scorecard?

Tuesday, May 24th, 2011

Proctor & Gamble recently upgraded its Supplier Environmental Sustainability Scorecard for 2011, meant to track and encourage improvement of key environmental measures in its supply chain.1 This is the second year the company has used the scorecard, the first year was more focused on assessing if P&G would be able to get clear data to measure future improvements and jump-start innovation in the area of sustainability.2

The Scorecard has three main goals: enhancing supply chain collaboration, improving key environmental indications and encouraging the sharing of ideas and capabilities to deliver more sustainable products and services to consumers.2

While the main function of the scorecard is to provide a snapshot across P&G’s supply chain, it also helps encourage suppliers to share innovative ideas to improve the sustainability performance of the business as a whole.2 This can help the company identify opportunities to improve sustainability and the overall bottom line. P&G serves as a great example of making sustainability part of an organization’s culture. Does your company have a sustainability scorecard? If not, how do you keep track of sustainability performance across your supply chain?

1 http://www.pgsupplier.com

2http://www.sustainablelifemedia.com/content/story/brands/pg_shares_and_upgrades_sustainability_supplier_scorecard

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Posted in Energy Use, Greenhouse Gasses, Life Cycle Analysis, Sustainability, Uncategorized | No Comments »

National Agriculture Library Collecting LCA Data

Monday, May 9th, 2011

More companies and organizations are undertaking Life Cycle Assessments to improve quality, efficiency and cost.  To support their efforts, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Library, which houses one of the world’s largest and most accessible agricultural information collections, is taking on a new challenge – creating a library of all agricultural related LCAs.    The Library’s Director, Dr. Simon Liu, is using the United Soy Board’s life cycle assessment of soybeans as its model.

The LCA process has three phases:  the first focuses on organizing, developing the plan and working with partners.  The second phase, currently underway, will develop a prototype, collecting existing life cycle assessment data and then new data.  In the third phase, the project will disseminate data, expand the database and network of partners, and conduct further research.

Collaborators currently include USDA, EPA and DOE, international partners from Europe, Canada and other places who are doing similar work, software developers, and private sector groups including USB, Keystone’s Field to Market, and the Sustainability Consortium.  The data will be collected in tiers: Tier 1 will include crop production data by year, state and crop; Tier 2 data will includes means of production or work processes such as pressure irrigation, and Tier 3 data covers supporting processes, such as diesel production.    The resulting information should provide greater transparency, data quality, comprehensiveness, reliability and interoperability with partners and tools.  The expected outcomes will be open access to sustainability data sets and more efficient and faster sustainability research.

Possible applications of these crop LCAs may be better informed policy and corporate decision making, product development, product labels and other reporting.

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Posted in Life Cycle Analysis, Sustainability, Uncategorized | No Comments »

The Three Food Rights: Consumer Choice

Monday, May 2nd, 2011

Our last blog post discussed a recent white paper called Making safe, affordable and abundant food a global reality, and what the author calls “The Three Rights:”

1.    Food—a basic human right

2.    Choice—a consumer right

3.    Sustainability—environmentally right

The second right of consumer choice takes a look at how and why people around the world make the food choices they make. Based on the International Consumer Attitudes Study (ICAS) which looked at 70 reports and studies about consumer attitudes and behaviors from around the world, it is clear consumers want to have a variety of food options.1

The study shows that 95 percent of consumers are Food Buyers.1 They choose foods produced by modern agriculture and are either neutral about or supportive of using these technologies to grow food. In general, these buyers make purchases based on taste, cost and nutrition. It should be noted that most consumers operate under the belief that the foods they buy are safe to eat.

The study also shows that 4 percent of consumers are Lifestyle Buyers who purchase food based largely on lifestyle factors: ethnicity and vegetarianism, or support for organic, local and Fair Trade food suppliers.1 For this group, money isn’t a factor in their decision.

One trait both of these consumer groups have in common: They want to exercise their right to choose. When activists are successful at lobbying legislators to enact new laws or change existing laws governing food production, food safety, choice, affordability and access can all be compromised.

How important do you think the right to choose your food is in today’s world?

1 http://208.86.102.31/webcontent/Three_Rights_White_Paper_March_2011.pdf

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Posted in Health, Life Cycle Analysis, Sustainability | No Comments »

National Ag Library and USB Work to Make Agricultural Life Cycle Assessment Easier

Monday, April 18th, 2011

Many companies and organizations involved in the agricultural industry have started conducting Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs) as a way to understand their processes, find efficiencies, improve quality and leave smaller environmental footprints.  The United States Department of Agriculture’s National Agricultural Library is working to create a library of all agriculture-related LCAs.  They are using the United Soybean Board’s 2010 publication, “Life Cycle Impact of Soybean Production and Soy Industrial Products” as a model for other commodity crops to follow.  Dr. Simon Liu, Director of the National Agricultural Library, spoke recently about the value of LCAs and his agency’s work to make the process easier and more reliable for researchers.

He said that while LCAs offer great value to companies, conducting an LCA can be a daunting task.  The huge amounts of data that must be gathered and analyzed can be very costly and time consuming, if the data can even be located.  There is little sharing across institutions, and even when data is located or collected, questions remain about its quality.

Dr. Liu pointed to the soybean industry as a leader in agriculture LCAs.  He said that the industry is tackling the difficult task of finding and pulling together the relevant data about their product from a variety of sources.  He discussed how the soybean LCA pulled from a range of meticulously detailed data sources in the construction of its model.

Building on the USB model, the National Agricultural Library is attempting to make the data collection process easier for all crop LCA researchers by developing its LCA Digital Commons project.  The project will identify, extract, transform and validate LCA data sets from across crops and make them available to researchers who can then analyze and interpret the data and identify where further research is needed.  This will save time and money and improve the quality and dependability of data for all agricultural interests.

Posted in Agriculture, Energy Use, Life Cycle Analysis | No Comments »

Pepsi Demonstrates Commitment to Energy Efficiency

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

As companies across all industries strive to make their operations more environmentally friendly, some brands have become models for success. Pepsi, which was recently recognized as the 2011 Partner of the Year with Sustained Excellence by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is one such brand. The award from the EPA recognizes Pepsi for continued leadership in protecting the environment through energy efficiency.1

“PepsiCo’s long term leadership and commitment to energy efficiency demonstrates the types of accomplishments that we can all achieve in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and protecting our global environment,” said Elizabeth Craig, Acting Director of EPA’s Office of Atmospheric Programs.1

The 2011 Sustained Excellence Awards are given to a select group of organizations that have exhibited outstanding leadership year after year.1 Winners have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by setting and achieving aggressive goals, employing innovative approaches and showing others what can be achieved through energy efficiency.  How is your company making its operations more energy efficient?

1 http://www.pepsico.com/PressRelease/US-Environmental-Protection-Agency-Recognizes-PepsiCo-as-2011-Partner-of-the-Yea03212011.html

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