Project description
OLCA Pest

The main objective of the OLCA-Pest project is to build on current advances in life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment to operationalise and harmonize the emission quantification and impact characterization of pesticides in life cycle assessment (LCA) and product environmental footprinting.


Background & project objective

In current LCA practice, quantifying pesticide emissions from agricultural fields is not aligned with characterising related potential toxicological impacts on humans and different types of ecosystems. Furthermore, the pathways from pesticide application via emissions to environmental media and treated field crops to toxicity impacts are currently only partly and inconsistently covered and many relevant pesticides are currently not included. This leads to LCA results that are incomplete and often misleading and hard to interpret and this makes it impossible to assess and compare the environmental performance profiles of different pest management systems and practices.

OLCA-Pest
OLCA-Pest

To address these issues, it is the main objective of the OLCA-Pest project to build on current advances in life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment to operationalise and harmonize the emission quantification and impact characterization of pesticides in life cycle assessment (LCA) and product environmental footprinting.


Project output

Main project output documents and results can be found in below table, including a summary scientific open-access paper, a FAQ document around assessing pesticides in life cycle assessment (LCA), a set of default emission fractions and characterization factors for use in LCA, the main project report, and a set of public project deliverables.

Document titleDownload file
Nemecek, T., Antón, A., Basset-Mens, C., Gentil-Sergent, C., Renaud-Gentié, C., Melero, C., Naviaux, P., Peña, N., Roux, P., Fantke, P., 2022. Operationalising emission and toxicity modelling of pesticides in LCA: The OLCA-Pest project contribution. The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment 27, 527-542.https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-022-02048-7
FAQ — Summary and answers to frequently asked questions (FAQ) of the OLCA-Pest project methods and resultsProject-OLCA-Pest_FAQ.pdf
Summary — Overall summary of OLCA-Pest project results and main recommendationsProject-OLCA-Pest_FinalReport.pdf
LCI results — Default life cycle inventory (LCI) pesticide initial emission distribution fractions from the OLCA-Pest projectProject-OLCA-Pest_EmissionFractions.xlsx
LCIA results — Default life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) freshwater ecotoxicity and human toxicity characterization factors (CF) for (a) industrial chemicals and (b) agricultural pesticides from the OLCA-Pest project(a) Project-OLCA-Pest_CF_IndustrialChemicals.xlsx
(b) Project-OLCA-Pest_CF_Pesticides.xlsx
Deliverable 1.1 — Guidance document on how OLCA-Pest and other international efforts can be alignedProject-OLCA-Pest_D1.1.pdf
Deliverable 1.3 — Stakeholder workshops on Catalan wine, Swiss crops, French viticulture, and on stakeholder acceptanceProject-OLCA-Pest_D1.3.pdf
Deliverable 1.4 — Scientific publications, conference presentations, and public flyer to disseminate resultsProject-OLCA-Pest_D1.4.pdf
Deliverable 2.1 — Guidelines for harmonization and scrutinizing pesticide LCI/LCIA dataProject-OLCA-Pest_D2.1.pdf
Deliverable 2.2 — Relevant substitutive/other products/metabolites to be consideredProject-OLCA-Pest_D2.2.pdf
Deliverable 2.3 — Inventory of LCI/LCIA data structure and metadata descriptionProject-OLCA-Pest_D2.3.pdf
Deliverable 3.1 — Set of improved and documented pesticide emission models for use in LCA and guidance on fate modellingProject-OLCA-Pest_D3.1.pdf
Deliverable 3.3 — Documentation of emission modelling in PestLCI Consensus model (PestLCI-web Documentation)Project-OLCA-Pest_D3.3.pdf
Deliverable 4.1 — Method and documentation of harmonized plant uptake modelling of organic and inorganic pesticidesProject-OLCA-Pest_D4.1.pdf
Deliverable 4.2 — Status, next steps and documentation of groundwater ecotoxicity characterizationProject-OLCA-Pest_D4.2.pdf
Deliverable 4.3 — Status, next steps and documentation of terrestrial ecotoxicity characterizationProject-OLCA-Pest_D4.3.pdf
Deliverable 5.1 — Web based system, documentation, user guide for organic and inorganic pesticides (PestLCI-web Manual)Project-OLCA-Pest_D5.1.pdf
Deliverable 6.1 — Case study selection criteria and overall case study methodology white paperProject-OLCA-Pest_D6.1.pdf
Deliverable 6.4 — Evaluation of models by comparison with selected measured data or non-LCA modelsProject-OLCA-Pest_D6.4.pdf

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