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Published in:
01-01-2011 | LCA FOR ENERGY SYSTEMS AND FOOD PRODUCTS
Restaurant and food service life cycle assessment and development of a sustainability standard
Published in: The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment | Issue 1/2011
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Abstract
Purpose
There is no clear guidance for responsible food service operations to reduce their environmental footprint, so the efforts put forth by a restaurant may not have the environmental impact intended. As a result, Green Seal conducted life cycle assessment research on restaurants and food service operations to define priorities for environmental improvement. This information was then used to develop a sustainability standard and certification (i.e., ecolabel) program.
Methods
The life cycle assessment study focused on the day-to-day activities of running a restaurant, including direct and indirect contributions. To do this, a restaurant and food service operations model was developed by grouping the operational activities into four subsystems: food procurement, food storage, food preparation and cooking, and service/support. Data was collected from a range of restaurants in the United States. The impact categories examined included respiratory inorganics, acidification/eutrophication, fossil fuels, ecotoxicity, carcinogens, land use, and climate change.
Results and discussion
Of all the subsystems, food procurement contributed hotspots in all impact categories examined. On the contrary, the food storage subsystem contributed no hotspot in any of the impact categories examined. Normalization of the results confirmed that food procurement was the largest source of environmental impacts. In addition, it was found that the impacts of food services were dominated by land use, respiratory inorganics, and fossil fuels. The impacts could be reduced with various preferable practices. As a result, a sustainability standard for restaurants and food services was developed to include these preferable practices, the Green Seal Standard for Food Services, GS-46.
Conclusions
This study presents an overview of the main environmental impacts from the operation of a restaurant or food service. The results provided direction in the development of a sustainability standard and ecolabel program. This standard, the Green Seal Standard for Restaurants and Food Services, GS-46, is a comprehensive framework for operations to make meaningful reductions in their environmental impact. Further, operations that meet the requirements in the GS-46 standard have demonstrated significant reduction in their environmental impact. Finally, it was found that this environmental impact reduction can be done without added cost (e.g., cost neutral, with potential for financial gains).