CalcPEFDairy: A Product Environmental Footprint compliant tool for a tailored assessment of raw milk and dairy products

A compliant tool (CalcPEF_Dairy) to determine the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) of Dairy products has been developed following the Product Environmental Footprint Category Rules (PEFCR) v.6.3 guidance and the 2018 approved PEFCR for Dairy products. CalcPEF_Dairy is a new tool that simplifies and reduces the work for LCA practitioners when implementing the PEFCR for Dairy products. On contrary to traditional LCA software, CalcPEF_Dairy includes all the emission models needed to calculate farm and crop cultivation direct emissions and it also implements the specific calculation formulas stated in the PEFCR such as the Circular Footprint and Data Quality Requirement formulas. Moreover, the PEF compliant datasets provided by the Life Cycle Data Network are incorporated in the tool as source of secondary data. To demonstrate the accuracy of the tool a traditional dairy farm in Catalonia (Northwest of Spain) was assessed and the results compared with the European representative PEF compliant datasets for the production of raw milk, cheese and yoghurt. In addition to the environmental profile, CalcPEF_Dairy has determined the case study's environmental single score (ESS) for the production of raw milk (1.0 × 10^-4) cheese (9.7 × 10^-6) and yoghurt (1.4 × 10^-5); these ESS results are within the range of the ESS obtained from the analysed EF-datasets. The data sets' average ESS for raw milk is 9.9 × 10^-5 ± 1.1 × 10^-5, while for cheese and yoghurt are 1.5 × 10^-5 ± 3.1 × 10^-6 and 1.9 × 10^-5 ± 3.4 × 10^-6 respectively. A 78% of the raw milk production ESS is attributed to the dairy farm activities while, the raw milk production stage affects in a 87.4% and 80.1% to the ESS for cheese and yoghurt respectively.

Natural disaster management: experience of an academic institution after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake in Ecuador

OBJECTIVES

This case study describes the implementation of an academic institution's disaster management plan.

STUDY DESIGN

Case study.

METHODS

USFQ's Medical School developed a six-phase disaster relief plan consisting of: induction, establishing a base camp, crisis management and mental health aid, creation of multidisciplinary teams and multi-agency teams, and reconstruction. Each phase uses a community-oriented approach to foster survivor autonomy and recovery.

RESULTS

Our methodology facilitated the successful implementation of multidisciplinary interventions to manage the earthquake's aftermath on the personal, community and regional levels, treated and prevented psychological and physical morbidity among survivors and promoted healthy living conditions and independence.

CONCLUSIONS

A multidisciplinary response team that addresses medical needs, mental health, education, food, nutrition and sanitation is highly effective in contributing to timely, effective relief efforts. The short- and long-term solutions we describe could be applicable to other academic centres' interventions in future disaster scenarios around the world.