Ongoing shifts in human food consumption, driven primarily by western dietary patterns, are associated with significant economic, environmental (and health) impacts, all of which have become a major point of concern in recent years A recent flourish of diet-related EEIO studies supports the use of EEIO as an apt framework for performing top-down inter-country and intra-country comparisons of different diets which captures the entire supply chain of agricultural products. However, the widely used conventional EEIO structure, based entirely on the monetary Input-Output (IO) structure, poses considerable limitations when it comes to performing detailed comparisons between different types of diet or dietary scenarios. Whilst capable of capturing differences in net spend, type of food and place of consumption, conventional EEIO considers impact to be linearly related to the amount spent, thus disregarding the overall physical quantity being consumed. Yet, as common sense and bottom-up life cycle assessment (LCA) studies would suggest, quantity is a key variable in determining overall impact. Another commonly encountered limitation is the lack of a highly disaggregated agricultural and processed food sector IO structure which adequately matches the consumer product classification. The purpose of the study is to explore the potential of using alternative EEIO structures such as mixed-unit IO models for estimating and comparing the impacts of different types of diet or dietary components. With the use of the Industrial Ecology Virtual Laboratory (IE Lab), which offers a highly disaggregated environmentally extended multi-regional input-output (MRIO) model of Australia, the study estimates carbon and water footprints for different areas and types of consumers in Australia, a country where the status quo diet is characterised by high red meat consumption. It is envisaged that the results will allow sustainability implications to be drawn for current dietary patterns and also scenarios of ongoing and future trends.
History
Location
Melbourne, Vic.
Start date
2014-11-17
End date
2014-11-19
Language
eng
Publication classification
EN.1 Other conference paper
Extent
Conference presentation
Title of proceedings
Interdisciplinary Science for Building Sustainable Industrial Systems and Human Settlements 2014 : Proceedings of the joint Socio-Economic Metabolism and International Society for Industrial Ecology 2014 conference
Event
Joint Socio-Economic Metabolism and International Society for Industrial Ecology. Conference (2014 : Melbourne, Vic.)