Detecting unsustainable pressures exerted on biodiversity by a company. Application to the food portfolio of a retailer

JOURNAL OF CLEANER PRODUCTION

卷:166

Article

Wolff, Anastasia^1,2  Gondran, Natacha²  Brodhag, Christian² 

[1] AgroParisTech, F-75005 Paris, France

[2] UdL, Ecole Mines St Etienne, UMR CNRS EVS 5600, 158 Cours Fauriel, F-42023 St Etienne, France

关键词: Sustainability;    Biodiversity;    Business;    Carrying capacity;    Life cycle assessment;    Corporate social responsibility;   

DOI  :  10.1016/j.jclepro.2017.08.057

来源: Elsevier

【 摘 要 】

Companies are called by institutional organizations to assess their impacts on biodiversity and to take actions to achieve collectively conservation objectives. This paper presents a method to assess whether the pressures exerted by a business and its value chain on biodiversity are compatible with biodiversity conservation. The absolute environmental sustainability assessment framework is used to compare relevant life cycle assessment midpoint and endpoint indicators to the ecological budgets assigned to the company. This approach is illustrated based on the case study of a mass-market retailer with a focus on the pressures exerted by its food portfolio at the agricultural production step. The results indicate that several pressures driving biodiversity loss are not sustainable. The study also highlights the prominent weight of a few product categories in the ecological burden. These findings have implications for mass market retailers as well as their food value chains and open research perspectives to make such an approach fully operational. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

【 授权许可】

Free