Sustainability Criteria Task Force

Background and Justification Our current patterns of food production, packaging, distribution and consumption have significant environmental impacts including green house gases emissions, pollution and depletion of natural resources like water. In this respect the DG Environment of the European Commission issued an Action Plan for sustainable consumption, production and industry in which it is suggested to introduce eco-labelling for processed food in addition to other industrial products as of 2015. Some organisations already indicate the carbon footprint on some of their packs. Before different organisations start to use eco-labelling, and for labelling to provide useful information to consumers, there seems to be an urgent need to develop consensus on appropriate science-based eco-criteria and standards for the food sector.

Objectives

There is an urgent requirement to set a robust framework before legislation emerges, and before supply chains are committed and targets in place for purchasing or investing in ‘green’ technology.

The overall objective of this project is to define scientific environmental criteria and methods for their quantification to be included in proposed eco-labelling for food, including packaging.

Impact

The project will develop science-based pragmatic criteria for eco-labelling of foods (including packaging) that will be manageable, even by SMEs, at reasonable cost.

Stakeholders would benefit from a single approach to environmental/sustainability assessments – integrating the science and providing guidance through the decision-making process:

• Those consumers who factor environmental considerations into their food choices
• Regulators setting policy on e.g. eco-labels and bio-based materials
• Industry partners faced with purchasing decisions and targets for reducing environmental impact
• Waste management industry for managing complexity at end of life (waste stream contamination, composting technology)

State-of-the-art

State-of-the-art is quite progressed in the individual areas of environmental assessments. Complete life cycle analyses (LCA) have been conducted on a number of food products, although most have been done by individual companies and are not publicly available. LCA for plastics are very well developed, and biodegradability criteria are agreed via OECD protocols. There is growing consensus around the PAS2050 protocol for assessing carbon footprints, but less agreement around water footprinting methodologies and even less around which categories of environmental impact would be most relevant in any eco-labelling scheme.

The gap is apparent in bringing these areas (and others) together into a decision-making framework that results in a clear environmental sustainability benefit/decision. There is also a gap in identifying the key sustainability issues (e.g. narrowing a very broad concept into scientifically valid and meaningful criteria). Also of critical importance will be an assessment of the methodologies and databases available that would allow a scientifically appropriate analysis of product ecological impacts but that would not require a full LCA for every product.

Plan of Action

It is proposed that a framework be established to robustly assess how food products including packaging materials (e.g. bio-based materials and conventional fossil fuel based materials) should be assessed in the light of claims of environmental benefits (e.g. renewability, net global warming potential, use of and for food vs. packaging, and biodegradability). The key issue being an agreement on the key scientific criteria important for food product sustainability assessment, and a single transparent methodology whereby performance can be understood in an independent way from marketing claims.

The work of this group should be coordinated with other activities like the European Food Sustainable Consumption and Production Round Table.

Members - 2010

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