Is there a Simplified LCA tool suitable for the Agri-food Industry? Implementation of selected approaches in two different case studies.

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used for the improvement of the environmental performance of products and services, amongst which the food systems. Furthermore, simplification of LCA was found to be an important issue in the scientific literature, especially for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), which generally lack the necessary resources and knowledge for performing a full LCA. As a consequence, a number of approaches and tools have been developed and proposed in the last decades. This paper builds on previous research performed by the Authors in the wine sector, where a set of simplified LCA approaches were identified and selected by adopting decision making approaches belonging to the family of the Multi-Attribute Utility Theory. Subsequently, the selected approaches were implemented in a case study and the results were analysed in parallel to those of a full LCA. In this way, the strengths and weaknesses of the examined approaches were identified. Here, in order to advance and broaden the previous research and to evaluate the robustness of the results in the framework of the agri-food industry, two additional products were considered (roasted coffee and olive oil). The results of the two case-studies discussed in this paper focus on a series of issues, such as: the possibilities of using the same modelling for the different approaches; whether there is an approach or tool that could be considered as suitable for most agri-food products; which life cycle phase(s) was(were) more impacting than the others; which environmental impact categories were more affected than others.