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.

/pdf/reducing-food-s-environmental-impacts-through-producers-and-2xmi5ihk3n.pdf

Reducing food’s environmental impacts through producers and consumers

This manual presents a scientifically rigorous method to help companies understand their dependency and impact on global water resources, and offers guidance on response strategies that conserve water for industry, communities, and nature. It contains the global standard for water footprint assessment as developed and maintained by the Water Footprint Network. It covers a comprehensive set of definitions and methods for water footprint accounting. It shows how water footprints are calculated for individual processes and products, as well as for consumers, nations, and businesses. It also includes methods for water footprint sustainability assessment and a library of water footprint response options. The water footprint of a product is the volume of freshwater used to produce the product, measured over the fully supply chain. It is a multidimensional indicator, showing water consumption volumes by source and polluted volumes by type of pollution; all components of a total water footprint are specified geographically and temporally.

/pdf/the-water-footprint-assessment-manual-setting-the-global-32uctgx0m9.pdf

The Water Footprint Assessment Manual: Setting the Global Standard

Within the context of Earth’s limited natural resources and assimilation capacity, the current environmental footprint of humankind is not sustainable. Assessing land, water, energy, material, and other footprints along supply chains is paramount in understanding the sustainability, efficiency, and equity of resource use from the perspective of producers, consumers, and government. We review current footprints and relate those to maximum sustainable levels, highlighting the need for future work on combining footprints, assessing trade-offs between them, improving computational techniques, estimating maximum sustainable footprint levels, and benchmarking efficiency of resource use. Ultimately, major transformative changes in the global economy are necessary to reduce humanity’s environmental footprint to sustainable levels

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/344/6188/1114.full.pdf

Humanity’s unsustainable environmental footprint

A Review of Footprint analysis tools for monitoring impacts on sustainability

Sustainability is nowadays accepted by all stakeholders as a guiding principle for both public policy making and corporate strategies. However, the biggest challenge for most organizations remains in the real and substantial implementation of the sustainability concept. The core of the implementation challenge is the question, how sustainability performance can be measured, especially for products and processes. This paper explores the current status of Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment (LCSA) for products and processes. For the environmental dimension well established tools like Life Cycle Assessment are available. For the economic and social dimension, there is still need for consistent and robust indicators and methods. In addition to measuring the individual sustainability dimensions, another challenge is a comprehensive, yet understandable presentation of the results. The “Life Cycle Sustainability Dashboard” and the “Life Cycle Sustainability Triangle” are presented as examples for communication tools for both experts and non expert stakeholders.

/pdf/towards-life-cycle-sustainability-assessment-58x6dr17rb.pdf

Towards Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment

Harmonizing the assessment of resource use in LCA

Mensch und Umwelt sind vielfaltigen Umweltbelastungen ausgesetzt. Mit integrierten Methoden konnen auch Auswirkungen betrachtet werden, die in klassischen Okobilanzen bisher nicht berucksichtigt wurden.

/pdf/vereinfachte-bewertung-von-umweltbelastungen-t82slrr9qb.pdf

Vereinfachte Bewertung von Umweltbelastungen

It is with great sadness that we received the news that Tony Allan has passed away on the 15 April 2021 [...]

https://www.mdpi.com/2073-4441/13/13/1859/pdf

Obituary in Remembrance of Tony Allan

The Water Footprint of Modern Consumer Society, by Arjen Y. Hoekstra. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2013, 208 pp., ISBN 978-1-84971-427-3, paperback, $40.95.

Background: Anthropogenic impacts on the environment often result in loss of biodiversity. However, the effects of different parameters (such as soil pH) on biodiversity, which can be influenced by human activities, are poorly investigated on a global scale. The paper at hand proposes an approach to examine the relationship between biodiversity and several parameters, which can be anthropogenically influenced, on a major habitat scale. The goal is to describe the relationship of a single parameter and biodiversity by means of a mathematical model within one major habitat. Methods: Geographic information system (GIS) data for the parameters “mean soil pH”, “mean share of cultivated land” and “mean temperature in June” for the whole world were overlaid with GIS data for the ecoregions proposed by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF). By means of the software ArcGIS 10.4 (Esri Deutschland GmbH, Kranzberg, Germany), an average parameter value per ecoregion for all considered parameters was determined. Moreover, the index “biodiversity status” was introduced and determined for every ecoregion by means of the indicators “number of species”, “number of endemic species”, and “mean share of grassland and forest” for each ecoregion. As all ecoregions can be assigned to one of the 14 major habitats (as defined by the WWF), a Kruskal–Wallis test was conducted to analyse whether the parameters and the biodiversity status’ differentiate between the 14 major habitats. A mathematical model, which depicts the impact of the parameters on biodiversity, was established by means of curve fitting. Results: The Kruskal–Wallis test reveals that a significant difference (p-value of 0.000) regarding the considered parameter and the biodiversity status exists between the different major habitats. By means of a regression analysis and curve fitting, mathematical models were developed which describe the relation of the biodiversity status and the parameters for 14 major habitats.

https://depositonce.tu-berlin.de/bitstream/11303/7117/2/2017_winter_etal.pdf

Markus Berger

Papers

Harmonizing the assessment of resource use in LCA

Vereinfachte Bewertung von Umweltbelastungen

Obituary in Remembrance of Tony Allan

The Water Footprint of Modern Consumer Society, by Arjen Y. Hoekstra. Abington, Oxon, UK: Routledge, 2013, 208 pp., ISBN 978-1-84971-427-3, paperback, $40.95.

Analysing the Impacts of Various Environmental Parameters on the Biodiversity Status of Major Habitats