Environmental Labels: How Life Cycle Assessment Can Help with their Definition
Numerous environmental labels are based on life cycle assessment in combination with other methods. Are these methods compatible, and is it actually necessary to combine them? An Agroscope study investigates with the issue.
Environmental labels offer guidance to consumers for making quick environmentally friendly purchasing decisions. Some environmental labels use results from life cycle assessment, a standardised and widely accepted but data-intensive method for analysing the environmental impacts of products over their entire life cycle. Here, the results from life cycle assessment are frequently combined with other methods in order to bridge existing gaps and obtain an overall picture of the environmental impact. This combination of methods is not without its drawbacks, however, as the creation of environmental labels can lead to errors.
Four important aspects for this study
Agroscope researchers took a closer look at four aspects that play a key role in the creation of environmental labels: (i) aggregation, (ii) simplification, (iii) valuation assumptions, and (iv) subjectivitiy.
Aggregation is used to calculate an overall value from partial results. The (subjective) weighting of the individual aspects must be conducted in a careful and justified manner. Various types of simplifications are possible: Focusing on a single environmental impact (e.g. CO2 footprint) or particular life-cycle phases (e.g. production only); using generic instead of specific input data. Critical valuation assumptions can be said to exist when ecolabels do not represent the environmental impacts themselves, but make the blanket assumption that the chosen criterium automatically leads to lower environmental impacts. Methodological approaches can be influenced by the subjective decisions of interest groups, parties and associations (e.g. higher weighting of selected aspects or the pursuit of the group’s own business concepts).
What are the challenges posed by current ecolabels?
The study concludes that, generally speaking, ecolabels do not permit a comprehensive assessment of the environmental impacts of a particular product. The reason for this shortcoming is not just the limited number of environmental impacts considered, but also, in some cases, an inadequate scientific basis, a lack of transparency, or even (hidden) commercial agendas.
What should be borne in mind to avoid errors?
Various ecolabels are based on life cycle assessment data, but combine the latter using other methods such as the awarding of bonus/malus points to bridge (in-some-cases putative) gaps in the life cycle assessment. The study shows that this can lead to double counting, and hence to putting undue weight on individual aspects (e.g. product regionality). Bonus/malus points should be avoided as far as possible, particularly when the life cycle assessment already takes the relevant aspect into account. What is important, in addition to bridging methodological gaps, is to further strengthen and pool the various efforts towards the harmonisation and merging of existing databases by means of efficient IT solutions.
Fazit
- Environmental labels are important for raising customers’ awareness of sustainably produced foods.
- When developing the underlying methodologies, attention must be paid to the individual agendas of the different stakeholders involved.
- Special care must be taken when combining the life cycle assessment methods with other methods so as to avoid double counting and different weighting of individual components.
- The life cycle assessment method should continue to be used for the environmental evaluation of products in the research context, since information from ecolabels is not suitable for this.
Bibliographical reference
Consequences of the use or absence of life cycle assessment in novel environmental assessment methods and food ecolabels.
