SENSE: Harmonised Environmental Sustainability in the European food & drink chain
ESU-services is a member of the SENSE consortium involving 23 partners from 13 
countries. SENSE is a European research project supported by the 7th Framework Programme of the European Commission. It was launched in February 2012 and will last for three years.
The aim of the SENSE project is to deliver a harmonised system for the environmental impact assessment of food&drink products (see video). After the evaluation and the selection of the environmental impact assessment methodologies in Work Package 1, ESU-services conducted two LCAs on Romanian beef production and Romanian dairy products in collaboration with the Romanian partners Agroinvest and Calion. A third LCA on Not-From-Concentrate (NFC) orange juice was carried out with the Spanish partner Zuvamesa. The SENSE partner EFLA in Iceland carried out a LCA of aquaculture salmon. The LCA case studies are published with the deliverable 2.1 of the Work Package 2.
The LCAs helped identifying the data that is to be collected in each production step of the supply chain of food&drink products in order to perform a consistent environmental impact assessment. The data will be directly entered by the interested SME on a internet-tool. The internet-tool is available in a demo version. The SENSE project also delivers an Environmental Information Document (EID) that will gather all environmental information collected and assessed by the internet-tool.
For more information on the SENSE project, please visit the SENSE website.
Selected publications
Regula Keller, Niels Jungbluth (2014) THE SENSE-PROJECT: Application of the ENVIFOOD protocol to SMEs. 5th NorLCA Symposium 2014, Session 4: LCA in food sector: methodology and application, October 2nd, 2014 in Reykjavík, Iceland
Keller R. and Jungbluth N. (2014) THE SENSE-PROJECT: Application of the ENVIFOOD protocol to SMEs. In proceedings from: 56th LCA Discussion Forum (DF 56): Are Environmental Declarations of Products and Organisations the way to harmonise LCAs?, ETH Zürich, Switzerland, 09. September 2014.
Olafsdóttir, G., Doublet, G., Kjeld, A., Yngvadóttir, E., Ramos, S., Ingólfsdóttir G.M., Esturo, A., Landquist, A., Pop, B., Bogason, S., Larrinaga, L. Albinarrrate U., and Jungbluth, N. (2014) Pilot implementation of the SENSE tool: Validation and functionality testing. SENSE - Harmonised Environmental Sustainability in the European food and drink chain, Seventh Framework Programme: Project no. 288974. Funded by EC. Deliverable D.4.1, University of Iceland, Reykjavík, Iceland
Doublet G., Jungbluth, N., Ingólfsdóttir G. M. and Yngvadóttir E. LCA of food and drink products Presentation during the SENSE meeting in Copenhagen 24-25 October 2013
Aronsson A., Landquist B., Sonesson U., Esturo A., Zufia J., Nielsen T., Larsen E., Olafsdottir G., Barling D., Jungbluth N. and Villarreal B. P. (2013) Science, LCM and communication tools for harmonised environmental and social sustainability in the European food and drink chain - The SENSE project. In proceedings from: 6th International Conference on Life Cycle Management, Gothenburg
Doublet G., Jungbluth N., Flury K., Stucki M. and Schori S. (2013) Life cycle assessment of Romanian beef and dairy products. SENSE - Harmonised Environmental Sustanainability in the European food and drink chain, Seventh Framework Programme: Project no. 288974. Funded by EC. Deliverable D 2.1 ESU-services Ltd., Zürich
Doublet G., Jungbluth N., Flury K., Stucki M. and Schori S. (2013) Life cycle assessment of orange juice. SENSE - Harmonised Environmental Sustanainability in the European food and drink chain, Seventh Framework Programme: Project no. 288974. Funded by EC. Deliverable D 2.1 ESU-services Ltd., Zürich
Aronsson A., Landquist B., Pardo G., Esturo A., Ramos S., Jungbluth N., Flury K. and Stucki M. (2013) Environmental assessment methodology and sustainability indicators for products and supply chains. SENSE - Harmonised Environmental Sustanainability in the European food and drink chain, Seventh Framework Programme: Project no. 288974. Funded by EC. Deliverable D 1.3 SIK, Gothenburg.
Landquist B., Aronsson A., Esturo A., Ramos S., Pardo G., Ólafsdóttir G., Viera G., Larsen E., Nielsen T., Ingólfsdóttir G. M. and Yngvadóttir E. (2013) Key environmental challenges for food groups and regions representing the variation within the EU. SENSE - Harmonised Environmental Sustanainability in the European food and drink chain, Seventh Framework Programme: Project no. 288974. Funded by EC. Deliverable D 1.1. SIK, Gothenburg.
