© Selva Shrimp
Developed by Blueyou Impact, the scientific team of the Blueyou Group, and peer-reviewed by life cycle assessment (LCA) experts in Europe and Canada, the toolkit contains data questionnaires which can be filled in by seafood producers, accompanied by a guideline to explain how the gathered data can be used to conduct robust LCA-based carbon footprints.
As Jonas Walker, BlueYou Impact’s general manager and head of aquaculture, explains: “To conduct a good quality carbon footprint analysis which is reliable and robust you usually need two people involved: first you need the seafood expert who can supply accurate and correct primary data as well as explain the context of the seafood system; second you need a LCA expert who knows how to build LCA models in the softwares like SimaPro.
“What we found is that often, the two involved parties don’t have a sufficient understanding of each other’s needs to make data acquisition and the carbon footprint assessment a smooth process. The toolbox we developed aims to bridge exactly this gap by 1) providing easy-to-use data questionnaires that include questions that cover all the key parameters and 2) by providing a guideline which explains to LCA practitioners how to use the data to conduct a robust LCA.
“By making the toolkit freely available for everyone I think we can save tremendous amounts of time and parallel efforts all around the globe, because we can give a ready made, peer-reviewed template to everyone who does a carbon footprint assessment in the seafood sector, instead of every company investing time and resources to develop their own.”
Why it is important
As Walker points out, food systems account for between a quarter and a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, with terrestrial meat as one of the main culprits. While seafood is generally seen as a low carbon alternative to terrestrial proteins, that this is not always the case.
“When we started investigating this in 2020 we saw that seafood was often subject to super generic calculations. You see one value for beef, one value for lamb, one value for chicken and then only one value each for farmed and wild seafood – but that’s very far from the truth,” he explains.
“Yes the seafood industry does include very high quality proteins with very low carbon footprints but the range is huge. Fisheries that target small pelagic fish like herring and sardines are often really efficient – you have 20-40 l of fuel used per tonne of fish landed, then on the other hand you have bottom trawl or dredge fisheries which can have as much as 1,000 or 2,000 l of diesel burnt to land a tonne: but that’s not reflected in generic carbon footprints. With this huge range we needed a tool which is granular enough to identify the high and low emitting seafood products reliably,” Walker adds.
The roots of the toolkit
Blueyou began to dig deeper into this issue in 2020, with the launch of its Seafood Climate Impact Programme, an initiative co-financed by Blueyou and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.
“The goal was to step away from generic carbon footprint assessments and to produce a highly granular assessment that could place a value on low carbon seafoods,” Walker reflects.
© Blueyou
However, their research revealed that there was nothing suitable available for seafood, so Blueyou decided to develop their own.
“We realised that there was no easy-to-use guideline or even templates, explaining what parameters should be included in a seafood LCA and the once who do exist are too complex to use, especially for people not familiar with the seafood industry or LCAs. One such example would be the EU’s Marine Fish Product Environmental Footprint Category Rule (PEFCR) which is still in its draft form, and is too complicated for people not yet involved in LCAs. So, we spent weeks developing data questionnaires. Our questionnaire for aquaculture covers data points for hatcheries, for production and for processing, as well as transportation and packaging,” he explains.
It's a toolkit that Blueyou, which sells a range of seafood including the extensively produced Selva Shrimp, have constantly tested during development.
“We sell different shrimp and other seafood and we have been using the toolkit to see what are the main drivers for their carbon footprints and where these can be reduced,” Walker explains.
© Blueyou
Industry participation
As well as testing the toolkit on its own branded seafood products, BlueYou has now trialled the toolkit with a number of companies. The results – which are listed by species, not by company – are already available on their website.
As Walker points out, the results show that unfed aquaculture species like clams, mussels and extensively grown shrimp from integrated mangrove aquaculture– which don’t need feed (except for in the hatchery phase) – have footprints on similar levels to tofu. This is rarely achievable with other animal protein sources, especially not with terrestrial animal proteins which are often magnitudes higher in their carbon footprint.
Meanwhile the main contributors to the carbon footprints of intensively farmed aquatic species are feed and electricity.
A unique opportunity
Walker is now looking for as many seafood producers – including aquaculture producers – to test the toolkit as possible.
“The toolkit is out and its for free. If anyone wants to conduct a carbon footprint of their seafood products there is no longer the need to start from scratch, but you can use our templates and the guideline and start directly,” he points out.
Those interested can download Blueyou’s Toolbox for LCA-based carbon footprint analysis of seafood products for free.
