Session Chairs: Christopher McHardy & Sergiy Smetana 

This seminar is part of the series 'Sustainable Food Systems: Connecting Expertise in Academia and Industry'  organized by the EFFoST Working Group on Sustainable Food Systems and Young EFFoST held on 22 October 2021. The seminar series aims to provide detailed insights into various facets of sustainability in the food sector. 

In order to implement the 17 UN sustainable development goals, the food industry must act now, by lowering its environmental impact. Our sector needs to go beyond greenwashing and purely marketing-based approaches, to show consumers and other stakeholders that we are committed to change. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) as an accepted quantified system of food system assessment is facing numerous challenges and opportunities associated with the demand for the data on environment, social and economic issues to be findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR). It is obvious that increased data complexity will require new developments and interlinkages between different aspects of sustainability and data handling.

Talk 1 - Social issues in sustainability assessment of food.
Dr. Ulrike Eberle, corsus corporate sustainability GmbH, Center for Sustainable Leadership (ZNU) of Witten/Herdecke University, Germany
Food plays an important role for achieving the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Therefore, tools to assess the sustainability of food are urgently needed in order to make value chains more sustainable.
Access the presentation slides and for more information please contact Dr. Ulrike Eberle.

Talk 2 - Challenges and recent solutions in executing food-related LCA.
Laura Schumacher, PRe Sustainability, The Netherlands
The presentation will focus on some of the challenges I face when doing LCAs of agricultural and food products and some solutions recently developed.
Access the presentation slides and for more information please contact Laura Schumacher.

Talk 3 - Software technology driven approaches for sustainability assessment in practice.
Manuel Klarmann, CEO und Co-Founder, Eaternity, Switzerland
Our future with sustainable nutrition today! Our diet causes 1/3 of CO2 emissions worldwide. Enough to make a significant contribution to our sustainability goals. With the Eaternity Score, the environmental impact of all food in the market is provided in a transparent and informed way to consumers and decision makers.
For more information please contact Manuel Klarmann.

Talk 4 - Blockchaining food chains: Novel data approaches for sustainability?
Prof. Henning Høgh Jensen, DTU Copenhagen, Denmark
New developments in Food-Tech and Digitalisation-Tech will greatly influence our capability to govern food chains towards more sustainability, while simultaneously the same tech-developments will change the food chains themselves. This pitch will highlight some of the major developments that you should be aware of.
Access the presentation slides and for more information please contact Henning Høgh Jensen.

After the presentations, the speakers were available for a fireside chat (panel discussion) involving the audience.