This year I couldn’t help but notice a trend. It’s been happening the past few years and I believe its meaning is significant. Our busiest time – the period when we get the most inquiries, the most demo requests, and even close the most sales – is when everyone else is on vacation. So, when other businesses are slowing down for summer-time, winter holidays or even at Easter spring break – sustainability managers finally have the time, and freedom, to make some headway in finding better ways to reach their goals…

Click here to read Sara’s full op-ed column on Environmental Leader.

Bluehorse president Sara Pax speaks candidly with Food Navigator’s Caroline Scott-Thomas about the essence of sustainability today – it is more about profitability (cost and waste reduction) than saving the planet.

Listen to the podcast here: “It’s not about tree-hugging”: Sustainability is simply good for business.

The Journal of Industrial Ecology has published the study, “A Survey of Life Cycle Assessment Practitioners with a Focus on the Agri-Food Sector”,  written by Bluehorse’s Technical Director (and resident Food LCA specialist) Dr. Ricardo Teixeira.

The goal of the survey was to examine the evolution of the lifecycle assessment field over the last five years, including data collection, tool development, with a special focus on the challenges facing LCA practitioner practicing in the food and drinks industry.

Read the abstact of  “A Survey of Life Cycle Assessment Practitioners with a Focus on the Agri-Food Sector” on the Journal’s website.

Over the years, sustainability has evolved to mean different things to different people. In the US however, ideas are converging: sustainability means innovation.

General Mills Chairman and CEO Ken Powell set the tone in his opening remarks to the 450 food industry delegates gathered together at last month’s Sustainability Summit, the first event co-hosted by the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association and the Food Marketing Institute, held in Washington, DC. Innovation can come from motivated troops on the factory floor, from new product development or from the C-Level, but the overall consensus is that food teams need to think out of the package when it comes to sustainability.

“Innovation is at the heart of sustainability,” Powell said as he backed up his talk with concrete examples of some of the initiatives driving sustainability at General Mills’ brands. Powell encouraged his team at the Cheerios brand to innovate and they developed new technology to burn oat hulls, used to make the popular cereal, to turn it into energy for neighboring plants and homes. It’s a win-win situation for General Mills: the company reduced cost and waste by using a by-product and it was a PR hit. “Trim expenses by eliminating waste,” Powell advised his peers, adding, “consumers liked to support a brand that is making a local impact”.

He also told another quick-win tale. The company installed energy meters that cost the company $184,000, including installation, but their savings have already amounted to $665,000.

So whether you are a newcomer to sustainability, have analyzed facility level emissions or are looking ahead to sustainable innovation at the product level. Bluehorse agree whole-heartedly with Mr. Powell when he said the important thing is to “start now, start with small steps!”

The virtual roundtable webinar “Product LCAs for Food: Don’t put a square peg in a round hole!”, hosted by 2degrees on October 20th, provided a platform for a passionate debate on the state of sustainability in the food industry.

Bluehorse President Sara Pax was joined by a panel of food and lifecycle experts from Europe and the US, including Tom Beeston from Eat England, John Connors from the Supply Chain Carbon Council and Melissa Hamilton from EarthShift. The experts discussed and debated issues ranging from sustainability motivations and objectives, global legislations and standards as well as reviewed the LCA tool market.

To listen to the recorded webinar, click here!

Be part of the debate!

And, the discussion continues on the 2degrees network platform.

The Bluehorse team is also here to answer your questions. Send us an email at contact@bluehorseassociates.com.

Last week, the World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) released two new standards to account for GHG emissions in the corporate value chain and at the product level.

The GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) standard released by the WRI and WBCSD includes guidance for companies on how to prepare and publicly report a GHG emissions inventory that includes indirect emissions resulting from value chain activities. Scope 3 emissions can represent the largest source of emissions for companies and present the most significant opportunities to influence GHG reductions. Emission sources now include 15 categories divided between activities upstream, within the reporting company and downstream.

Individual Products now included in GHG

Complementing the corporate value chain standards, the new Product Life Cycle Standard is designed to help companies to measure the emissions of an individual product. The standard covers materials, manufacturing, use and disposal.

Both take a similar approach to GHG accounting and were developed simultaneously. The GHG Protocol says that together with the Corporate Standard, the two new documents provide a comprehensive approach to value chain GHG measurement and management.

The Product Life Cycle Standard offers insight on the benefits of product carbon footprinting for companies:

“The use of product GHG inventories can help product manufacturers avoid the pitfall of focusing too heavily on the most proximate or obvious emission sources associated with a product’s production while missing major emission reduction and cost-saving opportunities elsewhere in the life cycle.”

“Product inventories provide detailed information on the relative size and scale of emission sources within life cycle stages and across the entire product system. This information may be used to identify the largest emission sources–or “hot spots”– in the life cycle and focus efforts on the most cost effective emissions reduction activities.”

PAS2050 gets an update

In addition, the British Standards Institute (BSI) recently reviewed and updated PAS 2050, the specification that provides a method for assessing the life cycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of goods and services.

The PAS 2050:2011 revision makes its methodology more relevant and accessible to a wider range of businesses by addressing key queries and issues raised by the PCF community, as well as the experiences of users since the standard’s first publication in October 2008. Some of the significant changes arising from the revision are: provision for the development and application of ‘supplementary requirements’ to enable more specific greenhouse gas emissions assessment within sectors or product groups; the inclusion of emissions from biogenic sources (e.g. biomass); and greater clarity on the treatment of recyclable material.
The continued co-operation between the WRI/WBCSD, BSI, ISO and the European Commission among others ensures that the new standards are a major step towards the harmonization of international PCF theory and practice.

The Bluehorse team participated in the review process and in stakeholder meetings for both the GHG Protocol Corporate Value Chain (Scope 3) standard and PAS2050:2011.

The Carbonostics lifecycle tool complies with the general guidelines of the new product-level standards.

sel-fish – adjective devoted to or caring only for oneself; concerned primarily with one’s own interest, benefits, welfare, etc.

Outside of the relatively small community of sustainability and CSR professionals in the food industry, corporate responsibility is often assumed to mean some sort of philanthropy. CSR reports with smiling children, green fields and clear waters often imply that the company cares deeply about their customers’ welfare, the planet’s health, and their employees’ happiness.

And that’s precisely the point. Communications experts intend that to be the primary take-away of a CSR report. But really…how many people think beyond the smiling children or the clear blue water? And that’s fine. If those communications work (do they?), then let’s leave the communications experts to it.

No shame in selfishness
But among ourselves, let’s not talk about any other motivation besides selfishness…

To read Sara’s article in full on Environmental Leader, click here.

Bluehorse is on board again as a sponsor of the 2nd Annual GMA/FMI Sustainability Summit, being held this year in Scottsdale, Arizona from September 12 – 14. The Trading Partner Alliance, the joint venture between the Grocery Manufacturer’s Association and the Food Marketing Institute, has put together an impressive agenda covering various sustainability challenges such as eco-labels, reporting, waste reduction, water use and lifecycle assessment. For the full program, visit the Sustainability Summit 2011 website.

See you there!

by Anne Himeno, VP of Innovation & Development at Bluehorse

Packaging is often seen as a big contributor to the environmental impact of food products, but there are more pressing issues the food industry should be addressing — like the urgent need to eliminate waste in the supply chain.

LCA studies have shown that for most food products and most environmental indicators, the share of packaging in the total impact is often low. In fact, the negative impact of packaging production and disposal is often negligible compared to the positive impact from preventing food loss.

Packaging is often treated as a stand-alone product, which means that its basic functions – to protect and to distribute the product and to educate and inform consumers – are often disregarded. Without packaging food turns bad, fragile products may get broken, distribution becomes hazardous, and the entire supply chain becomes inefficient. So when it comes to sustainable packaging design, the primary aim should be to find packaging solutions that will decrease the total environmental impact of packaged goods. Packaging eco-design optimizes food preservation and reduces food waste by creating the optimal sized and shaped pack for each food product.

Companies can no longer afford food waste
The price of food soared some 40% in 2010, according to the OECD, and the forecast for the next 10 years shows an additional 30% increase (1). These threatening statistics makes it is even more timely to bring food waste to the forefront of sustainability dashboards at food companies. The impact of food waste occurs both through additional volume of waste to treat and additional food volume to produce. The latter creates additional pressure on water and land resources. Recent studies have found the environmental impact of food loss through waste and spill to be more important than that of packaging and waste management combined (2).

Beyond the environmental impact, the consequences of food waste range from threat to world food safety to increased sourcing, processing and distribution costs for food manufacturers.

The numbers on food waste are staggering:

- It is estimated that between a quarter and a half of the global food supply is wasted,
even in some of the most sophisticated supply chains (3);
- Roughly 1 in every 3 calories produced in the world ends up being wasted;
- Food waste in the US amounts to 120kg per person per year.

Some of the waste is unavoidable (e.g. chicken bones, potato peel, egg shell) and some is reused as a by-product (e.g. for animal feed and pet food or to produce energy or fertilizers). But there is also a significant portion of waste that is partially or totally avoidable, caused for example by confusion on use-by dates and by food thrown away at home and in restaurants. One study estimates that totally avoidable waste in the European Union’s 27 represents about 10-15% of total waste in the supply chain, mostly at the consumer stage and in food service (4). At the manufacturing stage, food waste occurs mostly during the packaging process and transport/storage, as well as due to product quality requirements and equipment malfunctions. Manufacturing food waste was estimated at almost 35 million tons per year in the EU27 (70kg per capita) (4).

Waste impacts bottom-line
The private food sector has an important role to play in making the world’s food supply chain less wasteful and more efficient. Waste reduction is more and more considered a strategic issue, directly linked to resource management and cost savings. With mounting evidence showing how significant environmental pressure created by waste is, and with rising food prices, this issue is as crucial as ever.

Signs that policy makers and leading food executives are mindful that waste impacts the bottom-line are becoming more evident. Recently the CEO of the Canadian Agricultural Institute, David McInnes, called on all stakeholders involved in the production, manufacturing and retail of food products to jointly relook how the food system in Canada can be redefined to reduce waste on a wide range of levels. He cited the Netherlands and South Australia as taking the lead in this regard already.

McCain Foods Limited, a global leader in the frozen food category, has put considerable effort behind managing waste in its 57 production facilities around the world. Many of their initiatives have had a positive impact on their bottom line.

In order to optimize waste reduction efforts, it is important to measure waste hotspots along the supply chain. There is also an urgent need to better model food loss in life cycle studies.

Carbonostics, the smart lifecycle tool for food products, allows users to capture waste at every stage of a product’s lifecycle and to assess the impact of food loss along the supply chain through tables and graphs. Unlimited scenarios allow users to optimize waste reduction efforts along with other parameters.

To learn more about how Carbonostics can help you optimize your waste reduction efforts, please visit our site at www.carbonostics.com or contact us at contact@carbonostics.com.

References
1. http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/jun/17/global-food-prices-increase-united-nations
2. Katajajuuri et al. (2010): Preventing environmental impacts of food products by packaging
3. Food-Navigator-usa.com, January 17th, 2011
4. Bio Intelligence Services (2010): Preparatory study on food waste across EU 27 – 2010