Consumers are increasingly demanding products containing palm oil produced without harm to the environment. The industry response to this demand has been the creation of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) and the development of a certification system to ensure sustainable palm oil production. However, currently there is no scientific evidence of the benefit gained through the RSPO certification schema. This paper quantifies the environmental impacts of RSPO certified and non-certified through a detailed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of 1 kg of RBD palm oil to factory gate, produced in Indonesia and Malaysia in 2016, to identify potential benefits and trade-offs of RSPO certification. The ISO 14040/14044 compliant LCA is carried out following both a consequential and an attributional LCA approach. The inventory model presents a high level of detail. Primary inventory data describing the certified production system are obtained from RSPO assessment reports, covering 73% (634 estates) of the certified estate, including 111 smallholders, and 58% (165 oil mills) of the certified mills. Data for the total industrial production are drawn from national statistics and scientific literature. The non-certified flows are derived by subtracting the certified flows from the total industry flows. The consequential results show that RSPO certified oil reduces GHG emission by 35% compared to non-certified i.e. 3.41 (2.61–4.48) kg CO2 eq./kg for certified vs 5.34 (3.34–8.16) kg CO2 eq./kg for non-certified. Based on a thorough data quality assessment and uncertainty analysis, this result is deemed sufficiently robust and thus conclusive. Certified production achieves the largest GHG emissions reduction because of higher yields, i.e. less land use per unit of product, less oil palm cultivated on peat soil and higher share of palm oil mill effluents treated with biogas capture technologies. We also found that nature occupation is reduced by 20% in certified production while respiratory inorganic is slightly higher (3%) in certified production, due to the larger use of fertilisers. For other impact categories, results are associated with a larger uncertainty and therefore shall be considered as indicative. Similar results are found in attributional modelling.
This project entails a detailed comparative cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment (LCA) of individual product portfolios and production lines for recycling of organic residues at DAKA.
The life cycle framework allows for a quantitative assessment of the environmental impact associated with all stages of a product’s life. In the current project the product portfolios under study are DAKA’s treatment services of C3 slaughter by-product, C1 and C2 slaughter by-products and fallen stock and food waste.
For all portfolios the environmental impact of DAKA’s treatment of different slaughter by-products and organic residues are calculated. For C3 slaughter by-products, a comparison with energy production (biogas) is also performed. The purpose of analysing all product portfolios is to gain a complete overview of DAKA’s total annual environmental impact.
The project follows the requirements in the international standards for LCA: ISO 14040 (2006) and 14044 (2006). The LCA has been subject to a critical panel review in accordance with the ISO standards on LCA. The study covers a wide range of environmental impacts, including greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, i.e. carbon footprint, nature occupation, respiratory effects, eutrophication etc. The LCA also addresses indirect land use changes (iLUC).
Consumers as well as professional players in the grocery and catering industry are increasingly demanding information on the climate footprint of the foods they buy or sell. From the fall of 2020, consumers as well as professional players in the grocery and catering industry will be able to gather knowledge and inspiration in "The Large Climate Database". The project consists of a professional dialogue phase during the spring of 2020, preparation of a climate database of more than 500 foodstuffs, and publishing and dissemination of the database in Danish and English at the end of 2020. "The Large Climate Database" will be a central tool that can be used, for example, as a basis for a simplified climate labeling system, climate-adjusted recipes, apps for calculating a purchase's climate footprint, school curriculums, upgrading kitchen staff, information campaigns and much more.
Visit the database: https://denstoreklimadatabase.dk/
For more information visit Concito's press-release, public service tv channel and
podcast for the Climate Podcast - by the newspaper Information (all in Danish).
See small video presentation of the project (15 minutes, in English):
A life cycle assessment (LCA) is conducted on the current refractory waste management practices in a steel works in Spain producing around 6,000 tonnes of refractory waste in 2018. Management practices included direct reuse of spent magnesia-carbon (MgO-C) bricks, recycling of MgO-C bricks and high-alumina refractories by an external contractor and landfilling of monolithics and isostatic refractories, for which there were yet no established valorization routes. This current situation was compared to a hypothetical scenario where all refractories were disposed in landfill. The LCA included waste management activities (collection, transport, treatment) as well as production of substituted primary materials (dead-burned magnesia, calcined bauxite and new MgO-C bricks) produced in China and Germany. Results are discussed for four indicators: greenhouse-gas emissions, Non-renewable energy demand, land use and water use. Overall, per tonne of produced waste, the current management leads to a reduction or saving of 0.54 tonnes CO2-eq, 3 GJ primary energy from non-renewable sources, the occupation of 10 m2 of land during one year and the abstraction of 5 m3 freshwater. The results also show that reuse, in the particular case of spent MgO-C bricks, leads to higher benefits than recycling by at least a factor four. The robustness of these results is confirmed through the application of a Monte Carlo uncertainty analysis, as well as a sensitivity analysis focusing on a shift from coal to natural gas in the Chinese refractory industry.
