How to quantify the impact?
Emissions from cultivation and animal husbandry cannot simply me measured. Therefore these emissions will need to be calculated, based on standards and methodologies for consistency. Various methods exist to assess the impact of products and production systems. One of them is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). An LCA gives the opportunity to capture the whole supply chain of a certain product and the approach reveals all the individual stages of a product or a product system; it describes the whole life cycle of a product. This means all phases in the product's life cycle are analysed, from raw materials, packaging and transport to retail, consumption and waste processing – from cradle-to-grave. An LCA reveals the environmental impacts and where they occur in the supply chain (hotspots). This allows precise actions to be taken to improve processes and products and reduce their environmental impact. This can lead to savings in raw materials and energy use, in turn reducing costs. Furthermore, impacts of different nature can be assessed. For instance, CO2 emissions, land occupation, water consumption and fossil depletion.