Recent developments in Life Cycle Assessment.

Food’s environmental impacts are created by millions of diverse producers. To identify solutions that are effective under this heterogeneity, we consolidated data covering five environmental indicators; 38,700 farms; and 1600 processors, packaging types, and retailers. Impact can vary 50-fold among producers of the same product, creating substantial mitigation opportunities. However, mitigation is complicated by trade-offs, multiple ways for producers to achieve low impacts, and interactions throughout the supply chain. Producers have limits on how far they can reduce impacts. Most strikingly, impacts of the lowest-impact animal products typically exceed those of vegetable substitutes, providing new evidence for the importance of dietary change. Cumulatively, our findings support an approach where producers monitor their own impacts, flexibly meet environmental targets by choosing from multiple practices, and communicate their impacts to consumers.

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Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers

Processes causing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions benefit humans by providing consumer goods and services. This benefit, and hence the responsibility for emissions, varies by purpose or consumption category and is unevenly distributed across and within countries. We quantify greenhouse gas emissions associated with the final consumption of goods and services for 73 nations and 14 aggregate world regions. We analyze the contribution of 8 categories: construction, shelter, food, clothing, mobility, manufactured products, services, and trade. National average per capita footprints vary from 1 tCO2e/y in African countries to ∼30t/y in Luxembourg and the United States. The expenditure elasticity is 0.57. The cross-national expenditure elasticity for just CO2, 0.81, corresponds remarkably well to the cross-sectional elasticities found within nations, suggesting a global relationship between expenditure and emissions that holds across several orders of magnitude difference. On the global level, 72% of greenhouse ...

Carbon Footprint of Nations: A Global, Trade-Linked Analysis

by J. Biggs and C. Tang, Maidenhead, England,
Open University Press, 2007, 360 pp., £29.99, ISBN-13: 978-0-335-22126-4

Teaching for quality learning at university

New developments in recirculating aquaculture systems in Europe: A perspective on environmental sustainability

Carbon Footprint: A Catalyst for Life Cycle Assessment?

Background, Aim and Scope
Soybean meal is an important protein input to the European livestock production, with Argentina being an important supplier. The area cultivated with soybeans is still increasing globally, and so are the number of LCAs where the production of soybean meal forms part of the product chain. In recent years there has been increasing focus on how soybean production affects the environment. The purpose of the study was to estimate the environmental consequences of soybean meal consumption using a consequential LCA approach. The functional unit is ‘one kg of soybean meal produced in Argentina and delivered to Rotterdam Harbor’.

LCA of soybean meal

In a world where systems are increasingly larger, where their boundaries are often difficult to identify, and where societal rather than technical issues play increasingly bigger roles, problems cannot be solved by applying a technical solution alone It thus becomes important for engineers to be skilled not only in terms of their particular technical field but also their ability to identify non-technical aspects of problems, the interaction between these aspects and possible solutions Introducing and integrating these aspects into engineering education is certainly not an easy task and requires innovative approaches In this article, focus is placed on the so-called Aalborg Model, a problem-oriented and project-based learning paradigm utilised at Aalborg University (Denmark), and the mutual benefits that this particular learning strategy provides for students, faculty and communities The article discusses the concept of sustainable development; accounts for the general capabilities of engineer

Problem-Oriented and Project-Based Learning (POPBL) as an Innovative Learning Strategy for Sustainable Development in Engineering Education.

Goal, Scope and Background
This article presents the main results from a PhD dissertation about environmental impacts from Danish fish products. The focus is on LCA results for flatfish, but the article also gives an overview of screenings of other fish species. Furthermore, it includes an analysis of the energy consumption in the fishing stage – as a function of fish species and fishing methods. Alternative impact categories that have not been included in the quantitative LCA and policy perspectives are elaborated in the discussion part of the paper.

LCA of Danish Fish Products. New methods and insights (9 pp)

Previous studies based on life-cycle assessment (LCA) in Denmark and Sweden have shown that the fishery is the environmental “hot spot” in the life cycle of certain fish products. Within the fishery, fuel consumption is one of the most important factors addressed by LCA. The present study reveals that there are great differences in fuel consumption between fisheries targeting groundfish or shellfish and those targeting pelagic fish or industrial fish. Here, I show that fuel consumption per kilogram of caught fish varies considerably as a function of fishing gear and vessel size, even considering the same target species. I argue that these differences need to be addressed in the search for a fuel-efficient fishery. Improvements in fuel efficiency may be consistent with other objectives, such as reduced impacts on seafloor habitats and reduced discard.

Mikkel Thrane

Papers

Carbon Footprint: A Catalyst for Life Cycle Assessment?

LCA of soybean meal

Problem-Oriented and Project-Based Learning (POPBL) as an Innovative Learning Strategy for Sustainable Development in Engineering Education.

LCA of Danish Fish Products. New methods and insights (9 pp)

Energy Consumption in the Danish Fishery: Identification of Key Factors