Life cycle impacts of protein-rich foods: creating robust yet extensive life cycle models for use in a consumer app

In recent years, there has been a growing concern from the scientific community regarding the significant environmental impacts of animal agriculture. In order to draw consumer attention to this issue, there have been a number of initiatives, such as ecolabeling, that seek to influence consumer purchasing behavior. The growth in popularity of smartphone apps has also led to the creation of apps that aim to assist consumers in making more sustainable and greener choices. The Dutch animal welfare non-governmental organization, Varkens in Nood, set out to create an app that would incorporate both specific life cycle environmental and animal welfare impacts of animal products and alternatives and that would allow consumers to access this information while shopping. The life cycle assessment portion of the study was conducted by CE Delft and involved the modeling of the life cycle environmental impacts of 106 different animal products and animal product alternatives from the farm to the supermarket. Given the breadth of animal products and alternatives studied, the database could be used to model over 19,000 individual products available in Dutch supermarkets. The impacts of the life cycles were assessed using a customized version of the ReCiPe (hierarchic endpoint) method. The results show that there are large differences between the product groups, but also within product groups. The main causes for the differences in biodiversity, climate change and land use change are as a result of the differences in livestock management, feed, feed conversion and greenhouse gas production by ruminants. The project also showcases how the needs of the future app user affected the setup of the study, both in the technical database aspects and in keeping the data robust yet simple to understand for the consumer.