Quantitative assessment of organic residues

This project entails a detailed cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of individual product portfolios and production lines for recycling of slaughter by-products and organic residues at SARIA across their European network of operations.

The life cycle framework allows for a quantitative assessment of the environmental impact associated with all stages of a product’s life. For all product portfolios the environmental impact of SARIA’s treatment of different slaughter by-products and organic residues are calculated.

A user-friendly SARIA Excel LCA tool was also developed, consisting of:

• a data collection module, with automated quality assurance checks built in every cell, providing warning messages if the data entered are out of expected ranges or break the mass balances.
• a calculation module, not visible to the user.
• an LCIA module, where the results are shown for three mid-point impact categories: “Global warming”, “Respiratory inorganics”, “Nature occupation”; and one end-point: “Monetarised impact”. The result is disaggregated in a detailed contribution analysis, shown in a table and in a bar chart, both automatically showing the results for the impact category selected by the user.

The purpose of the SARIA LCA Excel Tool is to allow an automation of the LCA, enabling strategic decision makings and actions to improve their footprint:

• The LCA calculates the environmental footprint of SARIA’s production lines based on the full life cycle.
• Identifying environmental hotspots within the production lines.
• Initiating informed action plans to improve their environmental performance.
• Comparing production lines from different business activities or same production lines in different countries.
• Enabling fact-based communication, both internally and externally: Demonstrating the environmental benefits of waste treatment and of the utilisation of the treated by-products.