Life Cycle Assessment

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
   1. Objectives
   2. Learning goals
   3. Teacher page
2. Course content: Life cycle assessment (LCA) of pork chains
   1. What are the environmental impact of food production?
   2. Global warming
   3. GWP of different foods
   4. Nutrient enrichment (eutrophication)
   5. Acidification
3. How to access environmental impact of pork?
   1. LCA of 1 kg Danish Pork
   2. What is included in a LCA?
   3. Phase 1
   4. Phase 2
   5. Phase 3
   6. Phase 4
   7. System expansion and allocation
4. LCA for different production Systems
   1. The Danish standard system
   2. The Danish organic system
   3. The French standard system
   4. The Alternative French system: Porc Basque
   5. Summary of performance and LCA in the four systems
5. Completion
   1. Comments
   2. Self-assessment
   3. Key messages
   4. Further reading and references
   5. Evaluation
   6. Acknowledgement

Phase 2

Then in phase 2 the inventory analysis of the LCA is made. Phase 2 is the data collection, which is considered as the most work intensive and time consuming of all the phases in an LCA. The data collection can be less time consuming if good databases are available and if customers and suppliers are willing to help gather data. A lot of databases with LCA data exist and they can normally be bought together with the LCA software. Data on transport, extraction of raw materials, processing of materials, production of normally used products like plastic; cardboard etc. and disposal can normally be found in an LCA-database. Data can also be collected through national statistics as done in the LCAfood database for the farming processes. The data collection must be performed according to the functional unit and system boundaries. The data that should be used is for all the important processes within the system boundaries. The life cycle of meat can contain major processes like: production of fertilizer and fodder, farming, production of the packing, the slaughterhouse, transport, cooling and much more. To each of the processes there is an input, output of products and the discharge of emissions. The emissions can be greenhouse gasses, nutrifying and toxic substances (Figure 11). Life Cycle Assessment is a method to collect, summarize and interpret all these emissions.

Figure 11. Examples of inputs and outputs from a pig production system