Is there a simplified LCA tool suitable for the agri-food industry? An assessment of selected tools

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been increasingly used for the improvement of the environmental performance of goods and services, amongst which products belonging to the agri-food sector. Part of the international scientific literature considers simplification of LCA a relevant approach in order to make LCA easier to perform, especially for Small- and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs), which generally lack in resources. Despite a protracted theoretical discussion on the simplification of LCA, few simplification approaches and tools have been developed and proposed in the last decades, in particular as regards the agri-food sector. In the research presented here, the implementation of selected tools was performed for four agri-food products, notably: roasted coffee, lemon juice, olive oil, and wine. The obtained results showed that the use of different modelling (in order to meet the needs of each tool), along with the different databases and different environmental impact categories can lead to contrasting results, for example regarding the most affected impact categories or the most impacting life-cycle phase(s). Finally, the inclusion of agricultural processes within the incorporated databases of simplified LCA tools can be of fundamental importance for the agri-food products case studies. As a general conclusion, the analysed tools demonstrated to be quite suitable for the agri-food industry. Nevertheless, a wider use of the simplified approach in this sector would be strongly related to the existence of food-specific flows and processes in the incorporated databases.