Life cycle assessment (LCA) is widely used to assess a range of environmental impacts that occur throughout the life cycle of products. Although many different environmental issues were commonly included in these studies (e.g. carbon footprint and water scarcity footprint) the impacts of land use on biodiversity have often been excluded due to reasons including a lack of widely accepted methods and data limitations. Land use was the main causes of loss of biodiversity so it is important that these impacts were included, especially in agricultural LCA studies where large areas of land are occupied.
This study reviews the current methods that can be used to include biodiversity impacts in LCA and the data required to apply these methods.
This work was funded by the Meat and Livestock Australia. You can view the full report on the MLA website using the button below.