Study of the environmental impacts of a cup of coffee using too analysis tools: Strategic Life Cycle Assesment(SLCA) and Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) with SimaPro.

1. 0
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACTS
OF A CUP OF COFFEE
Itziar Lopez
MT2503‐ Methods For Sustainable Product Development

2. 1
SYSTEM MAP
SYSTEM MAP
This system map is based on a material,
energy, information and transportation
flows. The system is represented
following the different steps, starting
from the client that goes into the bar
and orders a cup of coffee, and going
upwards on the supply chain into the
back office (what is behind the line of
visibility of the client).
The system boundaries are determined
by what is directly influencing the
coffee value chain, meaning the various
direct inputs and outputs derived from
the several processes needed to have a
ready to brew coffee and the processes
that happen during and after brewing
(use and disposal).
However, in order to have a bigger
picture of the value chain of a cup of
coffee, products or services that directly
influence the possibility of offering a
cup of coffee such as the milk and sugar
input, the cup in itself and even the
personnel in charge of making it are
also represented in this system map.

3. 2
RESEARCH DESIGN – MAXWELL MAP
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
In facing a research period, there is an important choice to make. Two types of
research are most commonly used, quantitative and qualitative. Maxwell refers to
qualitative design as a non‐linear process with continuous iterations and mostly a
parallel workload in each and every of its steps. This last research design method will
be the one used in this paper.
Starting with the goal of the research, it is essential to understand the purpose of
this study, why are we doing it and who is interested in the results. Identify what
kind of results do we expect and how will they by lately used. Secondly, the
conceptual framework, the actual state of the art in relation to the topic being the
scope of our research is identified. Which are the existing theories, our personal
experience, previous experiments or research that has been done in this field, etc.
Once these two first steps are clear, based on the gaps found, a research question is
established. This question aims to be answered through various methods of
collecting qualitative and quantitative data. Lastly all this data and the conclusions
drawn from it need to be validated. (Maxwell 2012)
GOALS‐Why do you want to answer this question? Who is interested?
Our company is right now involved in a whole restructuration of the supply chain.
Our socio‐environmental practices are being constantly questioned the last years,
consumer pressure and government regulations together with various activist
campaigns have resulted in a huge decrease in our profits and a devaluation of our
brand.
In so, we have taken the determination to make a profound change and become a
fully sustainable brand, from cradle to grave or even better, from cradle to cradle.
Our first step was to introduce sustainable supply chain practices and start supplying
from certified coffee producers that ensure top range socio‐environmental practices.
GOALS CONCEPTUAL
FRAMEWORK
RESEARCH
QUESTION
METHODS VALIDITY
Our second step once we are sure our coffee is fairly produced, is to develop in‐house
fully sustainable practices related to the delivery of a cup of coffee, our unique
service. This commitment relies on the idea of gaining a socio‐environmental
certification that puts us on the top of the hill compared to our direct competitors.
As a result, the goal of our research is to find leverage points which could potentially
improve our performance in terms of in‐house socio‐environmental practices,
representing an easier and more radical change in the way we deliver a coffee cup.

4. 3
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK‐What is going on, the actual mindset? How can that
affect the result?
Low consciousness about coffee production environmental impacts and high
consumption in developed countries, however “consumers are demonstrating an
increasing interest in the economic, social and environmental aspects of coffee
production” (ICO 2012)
Agricultural practices are starting to be more and more on the focus of socio‐environmental
activists, due to:
 Contribution to GHG emissions(ITC 2012)
 Depletion of land availability for food crops in places where hunger is a
mayor issue
 Use of pesticides that are harmful for the humans and leak into the soils,
causing biodiversity loss and pollution of ground waters (ICO 2011)
 Questionable working conditions in most of the countries where coffee is
grown
The Third Wave Coffee Trend: Coffee evolving from a commodity to an article of
taste, an artisanal product (WorldBarista 2011).
The complexity of data collection is constantly present as a result of the reluctance
of companies to publish what is considered confidential data to the open sphere,
due to a fear of the data being used for other purposes than the desired one. This in
turn leads to less accurate results of the research (Hervani et al. 2005)
The research is also held with a mindset of socio‐environmental sustainability
constraints dictated by the Natural Step Theories and the 4 Sustainability Principles,
system conditions that need to be fulfilled in order to reach full sustainability.
RESEARCH QUESTION
What are the environmental impacts of the processes associated to delivering a cup
of coffee happening inside our cafeteria facilities?
METHODS
For the purpose of this research we will make use of a method based on the analysis
of the life cycle of a product from a material and energy flow perspective known as
LCA (Life Cycle Analysis).
LCA revolves around three main damage categories: human health, ecosystem
quality and resources, under which several impact categories related to different
aspects of the environment can be found (carcinogenic substances, climate change,
eutrophication, depletion of materials, etc) (LCA Calculator n.d).
VALIDITY‐How might you be wrong (data, conceptual framework, math)? How are
your system boundaries affecting your answer?
This research is conducted on a basic education level. This might influence the
accuracy of the results due to time constrains and lack of access to accurate data or
direct data from suppliers involved in the service of offering a cup of coffee.
Also, the system boundaries determined, might affect the result. In isolating the
whole service offered inside the cafeteria to only the processes directly related to
the offering of a cup of coffee, some of the main socio‐environmental impacts might
be lost. This can result in non‐realistic results of our performance regarding socio‐environmental
practices.

5. 4
SLCA
Strategic Life Cycle Analysis
In order to understand the
environmental “hot spots” of the
activities involved in the system of
delivering a cup of coffee‐milk, an
activity mapping is developed.
This activity mapping reflects the
different levels of action, starting
from the customer and going
deeper into the cafeteria activities
and later into the activities that are
behind the line of visibility for the
customer (cafeteria back office,
distributor, raw material, etc).
This activity map is based on the
previously designed system map. By
relating these various activities to
the 4 Sustainability Principles, it is
easier to highlight the activities that
might contribute most to socio‐environmental
impacts.
In this case it can be concluded that
the main “hot spots” are located in
the raw materials value chain but
also in the preparation of the coffee
inside the cafeteria and in the solid
and water waste treatment.

6. 5
LCA – SIMAPRO
GOAL AND SCOPE
As stated before, the goal of this LCA is to understand the main in‐house impacts
caused by the preparation of a coffee cup. The idea is to reduce our impacts related
to energy, water and GHG emissions.
Based on the whole coffee cup value chain system map developed, and the main
“hot spots” found in the SLCA, the scope will be determined by the energy and
material flows that happen inside our cafeterias. These flows include:
FUNCTIONAL UNIT
A cup of coffee (espresso 18 gr+milk 0.14L)
Energy
Energy
Put coffee
Use Coffee
Heat Milk in C. into machine Machine
Drink Coffee
Poor coffee
into cup
Poor hot
milk into cup
Machine
Clean Cup in
Dishwasher
Conserve Milk
in fridge
Energy
Energy
Soap Energy Water
Waste
Water
Emissions
Emissions
Emissions
Cup
Production
Emissions
Water
Waste
Water
Cup Dispossal
Emissions
Boundaries of the LCA

7. 6
INVENTORY ANALYSIS
Inventory data Normalisation
Number of espresso per day(15 hours serving) 350
Power consumption per day(24 hours working) 26KWh
Power consumption per espresso 0,075KWh
Water consumption per espresso 1L(aprox)
Milk/espresso 0,14L
Milk Packaging Cardboard/espresso 0,003Kg
Milk Packaging Aluminium/espresso 0,0005 Kg
Fridge usage 80%
Milk/fridge/day 30L
Milk/fridge/cup 0,14L
Dishwasher water consumption per cycle 15L
Dishwasher water consumption per cup(30 cup load) 0,5L
Dishwasher power consumption per cycle 1KWh
Dishwasher power consumption per cup(30 cup load) 0,033KWh
Dishwasher soap consumption per cup 0,0005 Kg
Note: Data obtained from several sources
IMPACT ASSESMENT
EcoIndicator 99‐Egalitarian Perspective
This first assessment method has been chosen due to its simplicity. It is a method
intended for internal use in companies (usually in product development processes).
EcoIndicator ’99 considers emissions seen form a Europe average conditions
perspective. Three impact categories are used: human health, ecosystem health and
resource use. The weighting is done based on cultural values, what counts as an
environmental problem for society. The egalitarian perspective represents one of
this cultural set of values, which corresponds to a consistent use of the
precautionary principle when assessing the risk of diverse environmental impacts.
Although compared to an individualist or hierarchical view is the most complete
view, it also leads to the most uncertainties. (Bauman and Tillman 2004)

8. 7
From this first material and energy flow related to the EcoIndicator ’99 methodology,
it can be outlined that the main environmental impacts are in relation to the brewing
of the coffee in itself, more concretely on the energy required for running the coffee
machine, which comes to a great extent from non‐renewable energies.
Below, the weighting graph and the total aggregated score graph for each of the
processes involved in the delivery of a coffee‐milk cup are represented. In these two
graphs what we can observe is that, more specifically, the impacts related to the
energy required for brewing the coffee come mainly from the need to extract fossil
fuels. This activity implies many socio‐environmental impacts (carcinogens,
respiratory inorganics and climate change) and risk of depletion of fossil fuels. The
process of conserving the milk inside the fridge is also affected to a grand extent by
this fact.

9. 8

10. 9
Ecological Scarcity
“The ecological scarcity method weights environmental impacts ‐ pollutant emissions
and resource consumption ‐ by applying "eco‐factors". The eco‐factor of a substance
is derived from environmental law or corresponding political targets. The more the
current level of emissions or consumption of resources exceeds the environmental
protection target set, the greater the eco‐factor becomes, expressed in eco‐points
(EP)”
(ESU‐Services 2006)
The aim of using this Impact Assessment methodology is to understand the end point
impacts that the process of preparing a cup of coffee‐milk has. From the ecological
scarcity standpoint we can see that in the material and energy flow the main impacts
are again related to the production of electricity, both coming from natural gas and
low voltage production in Sweden. Regarding the weighting and aggregated score
graphs, it can be determined that the main end‐point impacts happen to be in the
areas of emissions in to air, emission into surface water and deposited waste, being
again the coffee brewing process the one with the most impact.

11. 10

12. 11
Cumulative Energy Demand
This last Impact Assesment method was chosen as a result of the main impacts
discovered in the previous two methods, which pointed at the energy sources as the
root of the main impacts derived from the delivery of a cup of coffee‐milk. This
method focus specifically on the environmental impacts derived only from energy
related aspects by classifying the energy sources in five main groups:
1. Non renewable, fossil
2. Non renewable, nuclear
3. Renewable, biomass
4. Renewable, wind, solar, geothermal
5. Renewable, water
(Goedkoop et al. 2008)
From this third method graph of material and energy flows, it can be concluded
again that the main impacts are again represented in the energy flows into both the
coffee machine brewing process and the refrigeration of the milk.
Also, looking at the weighting, the highest percentage of the energy is coming from
non renewable sources, mainly fossil fuels but also nuclear, which again represent a
high risk of environmental impact.

13. 12

14. 13
INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS
The initial aim of this life cycle analysis was to understand the impacts of the
processes taking place inside a cafeteria in order to deliver a cup of coffee‐milk. The
boundaries were determined by the location of the cafeteria (Sweden) and also by
the fact that only material and energy flows happening inside the cafeteria would be
taken into account. These boundaries might have limited the analysis and also might
have lead to a loss of understanding of the big picture, the whole system in which
the delivery of this cup of coffee happens. If the chosen location was other than
Sweden, the energy sources could have been coming from renewable sources or
even from worse non renewable ones, which can deeply influence the result.
From the analysis, our main goal can be perfectly understood. Looking at the results
it is clear that the main impact comes from the energy sources we are using right
now, so that is something we need to look at new possibilities of ensuring that our
supply comes from renewable sources. Also some important impacts are
represented by the deposited waste and the emissions into surface water. Both this
could be researched a bit further to understand what kind of procedures we could
implement.
However, aspects such as the lack of accuracy in the data collected and the
differences among the various chosen methodologies could have led us to not
accurate results. Another relevant aspect is to understand the relative impact of the
in‐house activities compared to the impacts that the production of the coffee, milk
and other needed products such as the cups have. It might happen that the relative
importance of the first ones is very small compared to the overall impact of the
whole process and then we might be trying to improve something that in the end
would not have a real impact in our business.

15. 14
REFERENCES
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Oreintation in Life Cycle Assessment Methodology and Application. Professional
Publishing Svc.
ESU‐Services 2006.Swiss Ecological Scarcity Method. Ecological Scarcity.
http://www.esu‐services.ch/projects/ubp06/(accessed 11 February 2013)
Goedkoop, Mark., Oele, Michiel., de Schryver, An., Vieira, Marisa. 2008.
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com/download/manuals/DatabaseManualMethods.pdf (accessed
11 February 2013)
Hervani, A. A., Helms, M. M., and Sarkis, J. 2005. Performance measurement for
green supply chain management. Benchmarking: An International Journal (12:4):
330‐353.
ICO(International Coffee Organization). 2012. Sustainability Initiatives.
http://www.ico.org/sustaininit.asp (accessed 28 January 2013)
ICO(International Coffee Organization). 2011. Developing a Sustainable Coffee
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ITC (Internacional Trade Center). 2012. The Coffee Guide ‐ Climate Change and
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the‐coffee‐industry/climate‐change‐and‐coffee‐production/ (accessed 28
January 2013)
LCA Calculator. n.d. Methodology.
http://www.ecn.nl/lca/(S(yr5s4t55carcroji5ec1jq55))/methodology.aspx (accessed 2
February 2013)
Maxwell, Joseph A. 2012. Qualitative Research Design: An interactive approach. 3rd
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WorldBarista. 2011. Third Wave Coffee. http://worldbarista.com/3rd‐wave‐coffee/
(accessed 24 January 2013)