Developing Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) for shampoos: The basis for comparable life cycle assessment.

In 2013, the European Commission launched the Environmental Footprint Rules pilot phase. This initiative aims at setting specific rules for life cycle assessment (LCA: raw material sourcing, production, logistics, use, and disposal phase) studies within 1 product category, called product environmental footprint category rules (PEFCR), and for organizations, called organizational environmental footprint sector rules (OEFSR). Such specific rules for measuring environmental performance throughout the life cycle should facilitate the comparability between LCA studies and provide principles for communicating environmental performance, such as transparency, reliability, completeness, and clarity.

Spatial Variability and Uncertainty of Water Use Impacts from U.S. Feed and Milk Production.

This paper addresses water use impacts of agriculture, developing a spatially explicit approach tracing the location of water use and water scarcity related to feed production, transport, and livestock, tracking uncertainties and illustrating the approach with a case study on dairy production in the United States. This approach was developed as a step to bring spatially variable production and impacts into a process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) context. As water resources and demands are spatially variable, it is critical to take into account the location of activities to properly understand the impacts of water use, accounting for each of the main feeds for milk production.