Social footprint of European food production and consumption

Towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can support the assessment of the impacts to different sustainability dimensions. This paper focuses on the implementation of social LCA (S-LCA) to evaluate the social footprint of European food consumption in the context of operationalizing value chain assessment within SDGs. A selection of indicators and impact subcategories from those available in the Product Social Impact Life Cycle Assessment (PSILCA) database were employed to assess a process-based LCI model of EU food consumption by means of 44 representative products selected for the EU Consumption Footprint indicators. The assessment included an evaluation of SDGs coverage by S-LCA indicators. Results show that, unlike the environmental impacts, social hotspots emerge mainly in the fruit and vegetables categories. Hotspots of impacts are concentrated in India, Argentina, and other extra EU countries. A sensitivity analysis considering different weighting approaches unveiled the need of a harmonized weighting approach.

MANCINI Lucia;  VALENTE Antonio;  BARBERO VIGNOLA Giulia;  SANYE MENGUAL Esther;  SALA Serenella; 

2022-11-25

ELSEVIER

JRC127269

2352-5509 (online),   

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352550922003013,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC127269,   

10.1016/j.spc.2022.11.005 (online),