environmental impacts of a coffee cup
DESCRIPTION
Study of the environmental impacts of a cup of coffee using too analysis tools: Strategic Life Cycle Assesment(SLCA) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) with SimaPro.TRANSCRIPT
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ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS OF A CUP OF COFFEE
Itziar Lopez
MT2503‐ Methods For Sustainable Product Development
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SYSTEM MAP
SYSTEM MAP
This system map is based on a material, energy, information and transportation flows. The system is represented following the different steps, starting from the client that goes into the bar and orders a cup of coffee, and going upwards on the supply chain into the back office (what is behind the line of visibility of the client).
The system boundaries are determined by what is directly influencing the coffee value chain, meaning the various direct inputs and outputs derived from the several processes needed to have a ready to brew coffee and the processes that happen during and after brewing (use and disposal).
However, in order to have a bigger picture of the value chain of a cup of coffee, products or services that directly influence the possibility of offering a cup of coffee such as the milk and sugar input, the cup in itself and even the personnel in charge of making it are also represented in this system map.
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RESEARCH DESIGN – MAXWELL MAP
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
In facing a research period, there is an important choice to make. Two types of research are most commonly used, quantitative and qualitative. Maxwell refers to qualitative design as a non‐linear process with continuous iterations and mostly a parallel workload in each and every of its steps. This last research design method will be the one used in this paper.
Starting with the goal of the research, it is essential to understand the purpose of this study, why are we doing it and who is interested in the results. Identify what kind of results do we expect and how will they by lately used. Secondly, the conceptual framework, the actual state of the art in relation to the topic being the scope of our research is identified. Which are the existing theories, our personal experience, previous experiments or research that has been done in this field, etc.
Once these two first steps are clear, based on the gaps found, a research question is established. This question aims to be answered through various methods of collecting qualitative and quantitative data. Lastly all this data and the conclusions drawn from it need to be validated. (Maxwell 2012)
GOALS‐Why do you want to answer this question? Who is interested?
Our company is right now involved in a whole restructuration of the supply chain. Our socio‐environmental practices are being constantly questioned the last years, consumer pressure and government regulations together with various activist campaigns have resulted in a huge decrease in our profits and a devaluation of our brand.
In so, we have taken the determination to make a profound change and become a fully sustainable brand, from cradle to grave or even better, from cradle to cradle.
Our first step was to introduce sustainable supply chain practices and start supplying from certified coffee producers that ensure top range socio‐environmental practices.
Our second step once we are sure our coffee is fairly produced, is to develop in‐house fully sustainable practices related to the delivery of a cup of coffee, our unique service. This commitment relies on the idea of gaining a socio‐environmental certification that puts us on the top of the hill compared to our direct competitors.
As a result, the goal of our research is to find leverage points which could potentially improve our performance in terms of in‐house socio‐environmental practices, representing an easier and more radical change in the way we deliver a coffee cup.
GOALS CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
VALIDITY METHODS
RESEARCH QUESTION
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CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK‐What is going on, the actual mindset? How can that affect the result?
Low consciousness about coffee production environmental impacts and high consumption in developed countries, however “consumers are demonstrating an increasing interest in the economic, social and environmental aspects of coffee production” (ICO 2012)
Agricultural practices are starting to be more and more on the focus of socio‐environmental activists, due to:
Contribution to GHG emissions(ITC 2012) Depletion of land availability for food crops in places where hunger is a
mayor issue Use of pesticides that are harmful for the humans and leak into the soils,
causing biodiversity loss and pollution of ground waters (ICO 2011) Questionable working conditions in most of the countries where coffee is
grown
The Third Wave Coffee Trend: Coffee evolving from a commodity to an article of taste, an artisanal product (WorldBarista 2011).
The complexity of data collection is constantly present as a result of the reluctance of companies to publish what is considered confidential data to the open sphere, due to a fear of the data being used for other purposes than the desired one. This in turn leads to less accurate results of the research (Hervani et al. 2005)
The research is also held with a mindset of socio‐environmental sustainability constraints dictated by the Natural Step Theories and the 4 Sustainability Principles, system conditions that need to be fulfilled in order to reach full sustainability.
RESEARCH QUESTION
What are the environmental impacts of the processes associated to delivering a cup of coffee happening inside our cafeteria facilities?
METHODS
For the purpose of this research we will make use of a method based on the analysis of the life cycle of a product from a material and energy flow perspective known as LCA (Life Cycle Analysis).
LCA revolves around three main damage categories: human health, ecosystem quality and resources, under which several impact categories related to different aspects of the environment can be found (carcinogenic substances, climate change, eutrophication, depletion of materials, etc) (LCA Calculator n.d).
VALIDITY‐How might you be wrong (data, conceptual framework, math)? How are your system boundaries affecting your answer?
This research is conducted on a basic education level. This might influence the accuracy of the results due to time constrains and lack of access to accurate data or direct data from suppliers involved in the service of offering a cup of coffee.
Also, the system boundaries determined, might affect the result. In isolating the whole service offered inside the cafeteria to only the processes directly related to the offering of a cup of coffee, some of the main socio‐environmental impacts might be lost. This can result in non‐realistic results of our performance regarding socio‐environmental practices.
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SLCA
Strategic Life Cycle Analysis
In order to understand the environmental “hot spots” of the activities involved in the system of delivering a cup of coffee‐milk, an activity mapping is developed.
This activity mapping reflects the different levels of action, starting from the customer and going deeper into the cafeteria activities and later into the activities that are behind the line of visibility for the customer (cafeteria back office, distributor, raw material, etc).
This activity map is based on the previously designed system map. By relating these various activities to the 4 Sustainability Principles, it is easier to highlight the activities that might contribute most to socio‐environmental impacts.
In this case it can be concluded that the main “hot spots” are located in the raw materials value chain but also in the preparation of the coffee inside the cafeteria and in the solid and water waste treatment.
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LCA – SIMAPRO
GOAL AND SCOPE
As stated before, the goal of this LCA is to understand the main in‐house impacts caused by the preparation of a coffee cup. The idea is to reduce our impacts related to energy, water and GHG emissions.
Based on the whole coffee cup value chain system map developed, and the main “hot spots” found in the SLCA, the scope will be determined by the energy and material flows that happen inside our cafeterias. These flows include:
FUNCTIONAL UNIT
A cup of coffee (espresso 18 gr+milk 0.14L)
Use Coffee Machine
Poor coffee into cup
Poor hot milk into cup
Put coffee into machine Drink Coffee Heat Milk in C.
Machine
Clean Cup in Dishwasher
Conserve Milk in fridge
Energy
Energy
Energy
Energy WaterSoap
Waste Water
Emissions
Emissions
Emissions
Cup Production
Energy
Emissions
Water
Waste Water
Cup Dispossal
Emissions
Boundaries of the LCA
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INVENTORY ANALYSIS
Inventory data NormalisationNumber of espresso per day(15 hours serving) 350Power consumption per day(24 hours working) 26KWhPower consumption per espresso 0,075KWhWater consumption per espresso 1L(aprox)Milk/espresso 0,14LMilk Packaging Cardboard/espresso 0,003KgMilk Packaging Aluminium/espresso 0,0005 Kg
Fridge usage 80% Milk/fridge/day 30L Milk/fridge/cup 0,14L Dishwasher water consumption per cycle 15L Dishwasher water consumption per cup(30 cup load) 0,5L Dishwasher power consumption per cycle 1KWh Dishwasher power consumption per cup(30 cup load) 0,033KWh Dishwasher soap consumption per cup 0,0005 Kg
Note: Data obtained from several sources
IMPACT ASSESMENT
EcoIndicator 99‐Egalitarian Perspective
This first assessment method has been chosen due to its simplicity. It is a method intended for internal use in companies (usually in product development processes). EcoIndicator ’99 considers emissions seen form a Europe average conditions perspective. Three impact categories are used: human health, ecosystem health and resource use. The weighting is done based on cultural values, what counts as an environmental problem for society. The egalitarian perspective represents one of this cultural set of values, which corresponds to a consistent use of the precautionary principle when assessing the risk of diverse environmental impacts. Although compared to an individualist or hierarchical view is the most complete view, it also leads to the most uncertainties. (Bauman and Tillman 2004)
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From this first material and energy flow related to the EcoIndicator ’99 methodology, it can be outlined that the main environmental impacts are in relation to the brewing of the coffee in itself, more concretely on the energy required for running the coffee machine, which comes to a great extent from non‐renewable energies.
Below, the weighting graph and the total aggregated score graph for each of the processes involved in the delivery of a coffee‐milk cup are represented. In these two
graphs what we can observe is that, more specifically, the impacts related to the energy required for brewing the coffee come mainly from the need to extract fossil fuels. This activity implies many socio‐environmental impacts (carcinogens, respiratory inorganics and climate change) and risk of depletion of fossil fuels. The process of conserving the milk inside the fridge is also affected to a grand extent by this fact.
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Ecological Scarcity
“The ecological scarcity method weights environmental impacts ‐ pollutant emissions and resource consumption ‐ by applying "eco‐factors". The eco‐factor of a substance is derived from environmental law or corresponding political targets. The more the current level of emissions or consumption of resources exceeds the environmental protection target set, the greater the eco‐factor becomes, expressed in eco‐points (EP)”
(ESU‐Services 2006)
The aim of using this Impact Assessment methodology is to understand the end point impacts that the process of preparing a cup of coffee‐milk has. From the ecological scarcity standpoint we can see that in the material and energy flow the main impacts are again related to the production of electricity, both coming from natural gas and low voltage production in Sweden. Regarding the weighting and aggregated score graphs, it can be determined that the main end‐point impacts happen to be in the areas of emissions in to air, emission into surface water and deposited waste, being again the coffee brewing process the one with the most impact.
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Cumulative Energy Demand
This last Impact Assesment method was chosen as a result of the main impacts discovered in the previous two methods, which pointed at the energy sources as the root of the main impacts derived from the delivery of a cup of coffee‐milk. This method focus specifically on the environmental impacts derived only from energy related aspects by classifying the energy sources in five main groups:
1. Non renewable, fossil 2. Non renewable, nuclear 3. Renewable, biomass
4. Renewable, wind, solar, geothermal 5. Renewable, water
(Goedkoop et al. 2008) From this third method graph of material and energy flows, it can be concluded again that the main impacts are again represented in the energy flows into both the coffee machine brewing process and the refrigeration of the milk. Also, looking at the weighting, the highest percentage of the energy is coming from non renewable sources, mainly fossil fuels but also nuclear, which again represent a high risk of environmental impact.
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INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS
The initial aim of this life cycle analysis was to understand the impacts of the processes taking place inside a cafeteria in order to deliver a cup of coffee‐milk. The boundaries were determined by the location of the cafeteria (Sweden) and also by the fact that only material and energy flows happening inside the cafeteria would be taken into account. These boundaries might have limited the analysis and also might have lead to a loss of understanding of the big picture, the whole system in which the delivery of this cup of coffee happens. If the chosen location was other than Sweden, the energy sources could have been coming from renewable sources or even from worse non renewable ones, which can deeply influence the result.
From the analysis, our main goal can be perfectly understood. Looking at the results it is clear that the main impact comes from the energy sources we are using right now, so that is something we need to look at new possibilities of ensuring that our
supply comes from renewable sources. Also some important impacts are represented by the deposited waste and the emissions into surface water. Both this could be researched a bit further to understand what kind of procedures we could implement.
However, aspects such as the lack of accuracy in the data collected and the differences among the various chosen methodologies could have led us to not accurate results. Another relevant aspect is to understand the relative impact of the in‐house activities compared to the impacts that the production of the coffee, milk and other needed products such as the cups have. It might happen that the relative importance of the first ones is very small compared to the overall impact of the whole process and then we might be trying to improve something that in the end would not have a real impact in our business.
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REFERENCES
Bauman, Henrikke., Tillman, Anne‐Marie . 2004. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to LCA: An Oreintation in Life Cycle Assessment Methodology and Application. Professional Publishing Svc.
ESU‐Services 2006.Swiss Ecological Scarcity Method. Ecological Scarcity. http://www.esu‐services.ch/projects/ubp06/(accessed 11 February 2013)
Goedkoop, Mark., Oele, Michiel., de Schryver, An., Vieira, Marisa. 2008. SimaPro7 Database Manual: Methods library. http://www.pre‐sustainability.com/download/manuals/DatabaseManualMethods.pdf (accessed 11 February 2013)
Hervani, A. A., Helms, M. M., and Sarkis, J. 2005. Performance measurement for green supply chain management. Benchmarking: An International Journal (12:4): 330‐353.
ICO(International Coffee Organization). 2012. Sustainability Initiatives. http://www.ico.org/sustaininit.asp (accessed 28 January 2013)
ICO(International Coffee Organization). 2011. Developing a Sustainable Coffee Economy. http://www.ico.org/sustaindev_e.asp (accessed 28 January 2013)
ITC (Internacional Trade Center). 2012. The Coffee Guide ‐ Climate Change and Coffee Production. http://www.thecoffeeguide.org/coffee‐guide/climate‐change‐and‐the‐coffee‐industry/climate‐change‐and‐coffee‐production/ (accessed 28 January 2013)
LCA Calculator. n.d. Methodology. http://www.ecn.nl/lca/(S(yr5s4t55carcroji5ec1jq55))/methodology.aspx (accessed 2 February 2013)
Maxwell, Joseph A. 2012. Qualitative Research Design: An interactive approach. 3rd ed. USA: Sage Publications,Inc.
WorldBarista. 2011. Third Wave Coffee. http://worldbarista.com/3rd‐wave‐coffee/ (accessed 24 January 2013)