How can the environmental impact of plant based foods be evaluated and communicated to consumers?
In a new paper published in the Journal of Cleaner Production, Hanna Potter Karlsson and Elin Röös describe the methodology behind the WWF-vegoguide presented in another blogpost. The guide was developed in cooperation between the researchers and WWF in a process described in the Fig. 1 below. WWF was the project owner and were responsible for the final design decisions regarding aspects such as which products to include, target audience for the guide, evaluation criteria and thresholds. The researchers were responsible for collecting footprint data, test the evaluation criteria, and provided feedback on the design to WWF. Views on the guide from external stakeholders like consumer and trade organizations were consulted in workshops.
From Karlsson Potter and Röös (2020). J of Clean Prod.
The environmental impact categories to include in the evaluation of the foods were selected from the planetary boundaries framework (Steffen et al., 2015) and the mid-point categories of ReCiPe (Huijbregts et al., 2016) based on a set of criteria including their relevance for plant-based products, importance for guiding consumers, availability of scientifically accepted evaluation methods and data availability. Four indicators were finaly chosen: climate impact, biodiversity impact, water and pesticide use. Thresholds for rating the different product as green star, green, yellow and orange were designed to be aliged with the WWF Meat guide and to relate to the absolute food system boundaries as presented in the EAT-Lancet report (Willett et al. 2019). All products were compared on a per kg basis despite their different functions and nutrient content, which instead were considered by applying different thresholds for food groups, e.g. the protein group was allowed a larger share of emission space as these are more demanding to produce and more valuable in diets than carbohydrates.
Read the full paper here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095965262034765X