Our collaboration with Arla began in 2011 with a carbon footprint of Arla’s milk production in Denmark and Sweden. This work has since expanded and been updated through several iterations into an advanced dairy LCA model. Arla uses this model for baselines and benchmarks of its sustainability goals, as well as a tool for individual farmers to understand where their emissions originate.
Today, the dairy LCA model powers Arla’s FarmAhead™ Check tool, which enables 7,986 farmers across seven European countries to calculate the exact GHG footprint of 1 kg of raw milk from their specific farm.
The tool accounts for over 200 farm inputs, including cow feed, fertiliser use, cattle breeds, manure treatment technologies such as biogas, and energy and fuel consumption. These inputs are combined in the LCA model to produce a farm-specific carbon footprint of the milk.
We continuously update and maintain the LCA model to improve the level of detail in the background data and models, as well as incorporating the best techniques for mitigating GHG emissions in milk production.
This design offers Arla full transparency and data autonomy.
The FarmAhead™ Check tool allows Arla to monitor the progress of its climate strategy and assist farmers in reducing emissions by spotting the most effective reductions.
81% of Arla’s total corporate emissions come from its farmers,[1] and the LCA tool provides unprecedented data transparency into where the emissions originate and how top-performing farmers can lead the way for others to do the same.
By 2022, 99% of Arla’s owner milk volume had been assessed by the FarmAhead™ Check tool. The tool makes it possible for Arla to create a data driven and personalised action plan for each farmer to reduce their climate footprint even further.
Our model includes new GHG mitigation technologies as they become relevant for the farmers, including manure acidification and nitrification inhibitors.
[1] https://www.arla.com/49b894/globalassets/arla-global/sustainability/climate-ambition/arla-climate-ambitions-2030-and-2050-2023.pdf p. 7
The LCA tool makes it possible for horticultures in Denmark to calculate the environmental impacts from each crop. The intended application for Danish Horticulture (Dansk Gartneri), was to identify impacts and hotspots and use the outcome to substantiate their ongoing work on reducing the impacts from the Danish horticultural production. The tool is prepared for both organic and conventional cultivation practices. Furthermore, there are both greenhouse and free range production methods included.
The horticulture-specific calculator includes impacts for the production and upstream in the life cycle, including relevant processing and packaging. Results are given per ton crop at the greenhouse gate using Stepwise as method or as impacts pr. hectare or as a total for each holding studied.
This project is representative of the type of tools we customise for the our clients, who want multiple producers within the same sector to get reliable and accurate impacts for their individual production. Hence, the results are useful for decision making in future strategies and goals for each primary producer as well as the organisation, Danish Horticulture.
The aim of the project was to build a specific LCA model and Excel tool for MAVASOL to calculate the potential GHG emission savings from their sand recovery system (SRS) for dairy farms. This was done by comparing two alternative scenarios with and without the sand recovery system.
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:
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:
Environmental life cycle data on materials, transport and energy from many different sources are available in the Plastics Calculator. The user (typically from the plastic industry) only has to supplement with foreground data from their own production line.
The result from a calculation is a complete overview of the products environmental profile in the form of an environmental product declaration (printable in pdf-format). This can be used for communication purposes as well as for environmental optimisation of the production.
The Holiwast Decision Support Tool was a tailor-made web-based tool that allowed simultaneous comparisons of up to five stakeholder views or scenarios of municipal waste management policies. It was developed as part of an EU research project. The purpose of the decision support tool was to elucidate differences in understanding and opinions between the different stakeholders involved in municipal waste management decisions. For each scenario or stakeholder, it was possible to model different waste compositions, policy instruments, constraints and acceptable technologies. Results were presented in terms of differences between scenarios or stakeholders and in terms of environmental impacts and economic costs. The results were intended as a starting point for a dialogue between the stakeholders, to open up for an understanding of the differences in opinions, and eventually facilitate an agreement on the factual basis for decision making. The decision support was online for 10 years, and was discontinued due to lack of financing in July 2017.
Environmental results were calculated with data for "best available technologies" and were thus seen as a comparison of potential results for an optimised system. Results were not intended to represent any specific existing system, and the tool was not comparing existing systems with future planned systems. However, using the "Export to Excel" functions under "Feedback", the results of the simulations could be listed alongside similar data for any existing system, when these were available. Compared to technical tools, the decision support tool was not intended for comparing specific technologies, nor to model the impacts from specific combination of technologies. Rather, the decision support tool optimised the combination of pre-defined technologies, based on the user's choice of optimisation criteria and policy instruments. To make the operation simple, the user could not modify the technology data. Specific versions of the software, with other technology data, more representative of specific local situations, could be supplied on request.
The tool provided default data for all entries, in order to allow users to complete calculations, even when they did not have complete knowledge of all details of the local situation. Users could also start from a completely empty scenario. Finally, upon creating a new scenario, users could use this as a template for other scenarios. Especially when several stakeholders were working together on a session, it was practical to create a session scenario template with the local waste composition and other local data predefined, so that all stakeholders used this as their starting point.
Plastberegner.dk er et webbaseret værktøj, som kan bruges til at udarbejde LCA-screeninger og miljøvaredeklarationer for produkter. Den primære målgruppe er plastforarbejdende virksomheder i Danmark. Værktøjet er offentligt tilgængeligt og kan anvendes af alle. Plastberegner.dk indeholder miljødata for de hyppigst anvendte materialer, transport- og energityper som anvendes i plastforarbejdende virksomheder i Danmark. Den enkelte bruger kan supplere med egne LCA data. Dette kan eksempelvis være procesemissioner fra egen produktion eller informationer om brug og bortskaffelse af produktet.
