Economic value as a functional unit for environmental labelling of food and other consumer products

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to contribute to the debate on environmental labelling by exploring the potential of economic value as a functional unit (FU) for the environmental labelling of food and other consumer products. We used life cycle inventory (LCI) data for organic and conventional pigs and broiler chickens from the public French AGRIBALYSE LCI database and the CML 2001 method to calculate impacts per ton of animal live weight at the farm gate, per hectare (ha) of land occupied and per 1000 Euro of animal live weight. We also examined the relationship between carbon footprint (CF) and price for 24 food product groups representative of French food consumption. When using the FU live weight, organic animals had larger impacts than conventional animals. Per ha of land occupied, organic animals had smaller impacts than conventional animals, but production was lower. Per 1000 Euro of value, organic animals had similar or lower values for eutrophication, lower values for climate change and higher or similar values for land occupation. These results illustrate that the choice of FU is crucial when comparing products from highly efficient conventional systems to products from less intensive organic systems. For the 24 food product groups CF per product mass was positively correlated with product price; CF per product economic value was not correlated with product price. This suggests that a rebound effect may occur: consumers that choose foods with lower CFs per mass will tend to spend less money on food, leaving them with more money to buy other products which may compensate the reduced food CF. This type of correlation has not been observed for non-food sectors of the economy. Nevertheless, the FU economic value is attractive, as it considers product quality through the product's price. An economic-value-based FU will be more favourable to systems producing products of superior quality. More generally, an economic-value-based FU is well suited for environmental labelling of consumer products. A consumer has a certain budget to spend; an economic-value-based FU may guide the consumer towards reduced impacts per Euro spent. We recommend the use of an FU based on economic value for the environmental labelling of food and other consumer products. This FU will be a complement to currently used FUs. It will guide consumers towards lower impacts for a given expenditure.