See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/266732685

Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses

and orchids in Germany

Article in Journal of Cleaner Production · January 2014

DOI: 10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035

CITATIONS READS

53 3,517

4 authors:

Eveli Soode Paul Lampert

Technische Universität München University of Applied Sciences Erfurt
5 PUBLICATIONS 124 CITATIONS 12 PUBLICATIONS 82 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Gabriele Weber-Blaschke Klaus Richter

Technische Universität München Technische Universität München
51 PUBLICATIONS 1,040 CITATIONS 156 PUBLICATIONS 3,327 CITATIONS

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

All content following this page was uploaded by Eveli Soode on 01 April 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

 Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries,

asparagus, roses and orchids in Germany
Eveli Soode a, *, Paul Lampert b, Gabriele Weber-Blaschke c, Klaus Richter a
a €t München, Chair of Wood Science, Winzererstraße 45, 80797 München, Germany
Technische Universita
b
Straubing Centre of Science, Schulgasse 16, 94315 Straubing, Germany
c €t München, Chair of Wood Science, Hans-Carl-von-Carlowitz-Platz 2, 85354 Freising, Germany
Technische Universita

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Global climate change problem can be linked to production efficiency and everyday consumption pat-
Received 4 April 2014 terns by calculating the greenhouse gas emissions resulting from each product. This is usually referred to
Received in revised form as product carbon footprint (PCF). Only limited information is available about the PCF of German hor-
27 August 2014
ticultural products.
Accepted 9 September 2014
Available online xxx
We measured the cradle-to-grave PCF of German strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
different production systems and compared it to the PCF of the same products grown in other countries.
For the production and customer stage we collected primary data, for the comparison with products in
Keywords:
Horticulture
other countries we used literature data.
Product carbon footprint The results showed that the average consumer stage constitutes 3e71% of the PCF, the best case
Consumer stage consumer scenario 1e39% and the worst case 60e99%. The consumer shopping trip was a hotspot in all
Hotspots analysed systems where a private car was used. Electricity for production, fuel use for soil management,
Greenhouse gas emissions and cooking and washing dishes were also among the most often identified hotspots. German open field
strawberries perform better, German open field roses and asparagus are on the similar level with the
same products produced abroad. However, asparagus transported by plane, and strawberries and roses
grown in greenhouses have several times higher PCF regardless of the producing country.
Consumers as well as producers are responsible for reducing the climate impact of horticultural
products. Shopping trip on foot or by bike and using renewable energy can reduce the PCF significantly.
We recommend extending the analysis to the life cycle assessment or product environmental footprint to
consider more indicators to identify which products are less harmful to the environment.
© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction thereby address the climate change on the product level in the
most efficient way. PCFs also make it possible to compare the
Climate change has become one of the most relevant global climate impact of competing horticultural products, e.g. tomatoes
challenges. One way to combat climate change is to calculate and coming from different countries but sold in the same store.
reduce the climate impacts of single products. An estimate of the However, only limited amount of PCF including the raw material
total amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) emitted from a life cycle acquisition, production, distribution and the consumer stage
perspective of a good or service (later referred to as product) have been published about horticultural products (e.g. Scha €fer
gives an overview of the contribution to climate change from this and Blanke, 2012; PCF Pilot Project Germany, 2009b; Yoshikawa
product (Galli et al., 2012; Jensen, 2012), usually referred to as et al., 2008).
product carbon footprint (PCF). A full life cycle PCF is necessary In terms of the production area, asparagus is the most produced
to identify emission hotspots in the product value chains and vegetable in Germany with almost 20,000 ha (Statistisches
Bundesamt, 2014b). On the second place are strawberries with
19,000 ha (Statistisches Bundesamt, 2014a). Roses are the most
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ49 89 2180 6434.
important cut flower and orchids the most important indoor plant
E-mail addresses: [email protected] (E. Soode), [email protected] in Germany encompassing 37% and 25% of total revenue from cut
(P. Lampert), [email protected] (G. Weber-Blaschke), [email protected]. flowers and indoor plants respectively (Dirksmeyer, 2009).
de (K. Richter).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
0959-6526/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
2 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12

In Germany, strawberries are produced in the open field as well unknown which different products or product groups have similar
as in greenhouses. Asparagus is produced in open field and in the hotspots.
field with heated soil. Roses are cultivated in greenhouses and in Therefore, the objective of the current research was to calculate
the open field. Orchids are produced in greenhouses. Therefore all and analyse the PCF of the horticultural products strawberries,
these products have potentially high PCFs as suggested by Stoessel asparagus, roses and orchids produced in Germany and to compare
et al. (2012). According to Cellura et al. (2012a,b) one of the main the PCF if the plants are grown alternatively in an open field and in
causes of environmental impact of horticultural products is culti- a heated system. Additional aims were to compare these results
vation in greenhouses. with the PCF of the same products from other countries, to acquire
Climatop (2009) and Blanke and Schaefer (2012) have customer stage information based on empirical data and research
researched the PCF of asparagus produced in Germany. In both its impact on the PCF, and to determine the GHG emission hotspots.
cases, the asparagus is produced in open field with no additional
heating. We found no studies on other asparagus production sys- 2. Methods
tems. Also no information is available on the strawberries, roses
and orchid production in Germany. Without knowing the PCF of 2.1. Production systems
horticultural products from different production systems it is
impossible to claim if German production methods are more or less Four horticultural products were analysed in two different
climate harmful than that of the imported products. production systems (Table 1) in Germany. In addition, for all
PCF analysis normally includes processes from the raw material products three consumer stage scenarios (Table 2) and for aspar-
acquisition to the end of life (cradle-to-grave) or to the point, where agus and strawberries two distribution channels were considered.
the product is leaving the production facilities (cradle-to-gate). By combining different production systems with distribution
Cradle-to-grave system boundary includes also the consumer stage, channels and consumer stage in total 12 asparagus, 9 strawberries,
i.e. all activities from the moment of purchase until the product is 9 roses and 6 orchid value chains were analysed.
consumed or disposed. According to PAS 2050:2011 (BSI, 2011), the The distribution channels of asparagus and strawberries were
consumer stage must be included if the system boundary is from through the local sales stalls, operated by the producer, and selling
cradle-to-grave. During the time we carried out this study, there to a wholesale company, which organised marketing and distri-
were no guidelines available for gathering data and designing the bution to the supermarkets. All flowers were sold directly to the
consumer stage. marketer, therefore only one supply chain was included.
Although some authors strongly advocate that the full life cycle,
including the use phase, should be considered in the PCF (PCF Pilot
2.2. Functional unit
Project Germany, 2009a), there are more PCF and climate impact
LCA studies available which end at the producer's gate and do not
The functional units used in this study were 1 kg of asparagus in
include the customer stage (e.g. Torrellas et al., 2012a; Zafiriou et al.,
a plastic bag or plastic wrapping, 1 kg of strawberries in plastic
2012; Gunady et al., 2012). For many products, the consumer stage
punnets, 10 cut roses in a foil, and for orchids, a pot with 12 cm
contributes the biggest proportion of the PCF, e.g. a shampoo (PCF
diameter and 2 orchid plants on a tray at the point of sale. Some
Pilot Project Germany, 2008) or a car (Carbon Trust, 2011). The
transport processes required using weight for functional unit. In
consumer stage of horticultural products can contribute as little as
€fer and such cases we calculated the weight of 10 roses with a proportion of
13% (e.g. Page et al., 2012) up to as much as 95% (e.g. Scha
water in the transport bucket and the orchid pot with its plastic
Blanke, 2012) to the PCF. It shows that not only the producer but
tray.
also the consumer has the potential to reduce the GHG resulting
from the agricultural and horticultural sector. Data to calculate the
consumer stage GHG emissions is not widely available. Acquiring 2.3. System boundaries
such data requires questioning many people about their shopping
trip and product use habits. It is also unclear what proportion of the The system boundary of food PCF commonly ends at the farm, at
total PCF is related to the consumer stage in the case of different €o
the retail outlet or at the plate (Ro €s, 2013). The current study went
production systems. beyond that and included all product related processes from the
The PCF of the same agricultural product can be highly variable, raw material acquisition to consumption or disposal at the end of
depending on the production system, methodological choices in life. Processes, which were included in the study, are listed in
the PCF assessment (Ro €o€s, 2013), transport distance, means of Table 3. Not all processes applied to all four products. Transport,
transport, and consumer activities. Thus, also the processes which
contribute the most to the PCF, the hotspots, are different. For
Table 1
example, in the case of olive oil the two processes contributing the Production systems included in the study. All variants were also combined with the
most to the PCF are the use of fertilizer and the burning of prunings best, the average and the worst case consumer scenario.
(Close the Loop, 2013), for pumpkin these are the consumer
Production Open field, Open field, Greenhouse, Greenhouse,
shopping trip and N2O emissions (Scha €fer and Blanke, 2012), for system no heating soil heating non-renewable renewable
field tomatoes it is the transport to the market, and for greenhouse heating (for heating (for
tomatoes the greenhouse heating (Page et al., 2012). To reduce the orchids, orchids,
PCF of a specific product, identifying the hotspots can help to conventional sustainable
system) system)
concentrate the climate performance initiative on the most rele-
vant issues. This helps to find the best PCF reduction results in Product Supply chain

relation to the cost of making the change. Marketer Sales Marketer Sales Marketer Marketer
It is assumed that cultivation in greenhouses and transport by stalls stalls
plane are the hotspots of horticultural products. The comparison Asparagus x x x x e e
of hotspots of the same horticultural products from different Strawberries x x e e e x
production systems combined with alternative transport types Roses x e e e x e
Orchids e e e e x x
and distances, and consumer scenarios is missing. It is also

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12 3

Table 2
Consumer scenarios and quantitative data of inputs.

Product Consumer scenario

Best case Average Worst case

For all products

Shopping trip On foot or by bike (0.1e0.3 km) By private car (3.9e8.2 km) By private car (10.9e18.0 km)
Basket size Additional products (9.1e15.0 kg) Additional products (4.0e8.0 kg) Only one product (0.5 kg)
Organic waste Composting at consumer's home (0.0e1.0 kg) Composting at consumer's home (0.1e1 kg) Incineration plant with electricity
and steam generation (0.1e1 kg)
Other waste Incineration plant with electricity and Incineration plant with electricity and Incineration plant with electricity
steam generation (5.0e61.2 g) steam generation (5.0e61.2 g) and steam generation (5.0e61.2 g)

Asparagus 1 kg
Storing in fridge e 21 h (0.02 kWh) 46 h (0.04 kWh)
Cooking water amount 1l 2.5 l 5l
Using lid while cooking Yes No No
Washing dishes Dish washer (0.1 kWh) Handwash (0.2 kWh) Handwash (0.3 kWh)

Strawberries 1 kg
Storing in fridge e e 23 h (<0.1 kWh)
Consuming Fresh Fresh Baking a cake (0.9 kWh)
Washing dishes Dish washer (0.1 kWh) Dish washer (0.2 kWh) Handwash (0.2 kWh)

Roses 10 cut flowers

Changing water/week 1 (0.5 l) 1 (1.0 l) 3 (2.0 l)
Times of nutrient sugar use 1 (1.0 g) 1 (2.5 g) 2 (5.0 g)

Orchids 1 pot with 2 plants for 1 year

Fertilizing 30 days (1 ml) 21 days (3 ml) 14 days (6 ml)
Watering 14 days (0.1 l) 7 days (0.3 l) 3 days (0.5 l)

storage and waste disposal processes occurred in each life stage and system included straw as waste product from the same farm as
these were calculated as part of the relevant life cycle stage as they mulch. Greenhouse strawberry PCF included 33% of strawberries
occurred in time. GHG emissions from the production, maintenance cultivated in foil tunnels and emissions related to young plant
and the end of life of capital goods (buildings and machinery used cultivation and storage. All these processes took place in the same
in production) were not included in the system boundary. This is in farm and the strawberries were all marketed the same way. The
accordance with the PAS 2050 (BSI, 2011). open field rose production was in one farm with foil soil cover and
with no additional cover in the other farm. In both orchid cultiva-
tion systems, the meristem and young plant production phases are
2.4. Data collection the same.

2.4.1. Production stage

In total 13 producers provided data for the production stage 2.4.2. Consumer stage
calculations. All of the producers were located in the western part 80% of asparagus (Bayerische Staatsregierung, 2014) and almost
of Germany, Nordrhein-Westfalen. The annual average temperature 70% of strawberries (Frühschütz, 2012) consumed in Germany are
in this area is 9.0  C (German average 8.3  C), annual average pre- also produced in Germany. For collecting empirical data for the
cipitation is 857 mm (German average 779 mm) and there are on consumer stage, we set up a consumer panel from April to June
average 1487 h of sunshine (German average 1580 h) (Deutscher 2013 to cover the strawberry and asparagus season and the peak in
Wetterdienst, 2014). Large part of Nordrhein-Westfalen is flat the flower sales over the Mother's Day in May. Panel surveys are
which is why 49% of the total area is used for agriculture studies which are undertaken repeatedly to the same object and
(Landwirtschaftskammer Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2011). the same persons (Berekoven et al., 2001). All together 168 cus-
In the case of roses, two open field producers were included. In tomers took part in the study. At the beginning of the survey, the
the case of orchids, meristem production took place in a specialised participants answered two different questionnaires: 1) basic
laboratory and young plant cultivation in a separate farm which household data and 2) attitudes and socio-demographic data.
also provided the data for calculation. All producers received a During the panel study, the customers filled in a separate ques-
questionnaire in advance. Then an interview was conducted at the tionnaire for every purchase of the horticultural products. The
production site. Finally, the data was checked and the missing pa- product questionnaires asked for information relevant for calcu-
rameters added in a follow-up questionnaire. The data collection lating the consumer stage PCF.
process took place from July 2012 until March 2013. Where no The survey concentrated on three phases: the shopping trip, the
primary data was available, secondary data was derived from the use of the product and the end of life stage. We considered in total
literature or databases such as ecoinvent v2.2 (Ecoinvent Centre, 1137 acts of purchase of asparagus, strawberries, roses and orchids
2010). Consolidated data about the inputs in the production and for the consumer stage PCF calculations. Before calculating the data,
transportation stage is presented in Table 4. based on statistical procedure, we removed extreme values which
In the case of asparagus, both production systems included us- would have otherwise influenced dramatically the realistic results.
ing foils. The production system with soil heating received the The data was evaluated with the statistics software SPSS. In order to
thermal energy from a near-by chemical plant as waste heat. The generate different shopping and usage scenarios for the PCF, we
emissions of the first two years of asparagus cultivation, when no used descriptive statistics to perform an analysis of variance. The
harvest was taking place, were distributed equally across the years mean value was the basis for the actual scenario. The worst case
when asparagus was harvested. Open field strawberry production scenario was based on the mean plus one standard deviation, the

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
4 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12

Table 3
System boundary according to the life cycle stages.

Pre-production and production Transport Consumer stage

Transport related processes

, Production and transport of raw materials , Vehicle fuel combustion , Shopping trip fuel use
and produced inputs , Vehicle use
, Transport to the marketer

Storage related processes

, Greenhouse/soil heating , Storehouse cooling , Storing electricity production
, Electricity production , Storehouse electricity production

Waste related processes

, Disposal processes, incl. electricity and , Disposal processes, incl. electricity , Disposal processes, incl. electricity
steam production from waste in an incineration plant and steam production from waste and steam production from waste in
in an incineration plant an incineration plant
, Composting at consumer's home

Other life cycle stage specific processes

, Annual field work , Processes at the point of sale , Cooking electricity production
, Application of fertilizers and pesticides (no emissions occurred) , Washing dishes
, Harvesting , Packaging
, Post-harvest processes
, Packaging

best case scenario was mean minus one standard deviation. In shopping trip because it was an essential parameter in the analysed
some cases, adding or subtracting the standard deviation would not supply chains.
have been meaningful and then the average scenario value was For the PCF modelling we used life cycle assessment (LCA)
further used such as in the case of using a lid while cooking (see programme GaBi v.6.0 with GaBi (PE International, 2013) and
Table 2). Quantitative data of the consumer stage is presented in ecoinvent v2.2 (Ecoinvent Centre, 2010) databases. The PCF calcu-
Table 2. lations were based on a 100-year global warming potential ac-
cording to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC,
2007). According to PAS 2050 (BSI, 2011) and Product Life Cycle
2.5. PCF calculation
Accounting and Reporting Standard (Greenhouse Gas Protocol,
2011) all relevant GHG should be included in the evaluation. Also
We used PAS 2050 (BSI, 2011) and PAS 2050-1 (BSI, 2012) as
in this study all occurring GHG were included.
guidelines for conducting the study. However, in contrary to the
PAS 2050 guidance, we included all emissions which were docu-
mented regardless if they made a material contribution of at least 2.6. N2O estimation
1%. We also included customer shopping trip emissions. PAS 2050
says that the 1% cut-off limit should reduce the effort of collecting The most common way of estimating N2O emissions from soil
data which do not make a significant contribution to the study. We in PCF calculations is by assuming that 1% of nitrogen applied to
only found out the proportion of the contribution as we had mineral soils as mineral fertiliser, manure and crop residues is
finished modelling. Since their contribution was minor, they were emitted as N2O, while indirect N2O emissions are estimated as 1%
not excluded again from the PCF. We included the consumer of nitrogen from volatilisation and 0.75% of leached nitrogen (IPCC,

Table 4
Consolidated quantitative data of inputs in the production and transportation phase. If the input was not used it is marked with not applicable (n. a.).

Asparagus Strawberries Roses Orchids

Input Heated Field Greenhouse Field Field 1 Field 2 Greenhouse Conventional Sustainable
Heating kWh 52.632 n. a. 18.000 n. a. n. a. n. a. 21.118 15.963 21.854
Water l 1.053 5.380 15.556 0.382 120.500 89.100 77.495 27.268 13.508
Water hose g 2.187 n. a. 2.000 n. a. n. a. n. a. 2.000 n. a. n. a.
Electricity kWh 1.579 0.244 0.111 n. a. 0.133 0.364 0.517 3.264 2.254
Fleece g n. a. n. a. 0.267 n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a.
Heating oil l n. a. n. a. 0.002 n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a.
Diesel l 0.151 0.125 0.001 0.010 0.008 0.024 0.002 0.004 0.014
Substrate g n. a. n. a. 42.907 n. a. n. a. n. a. 25.800 204.000 134.000
Plastic pot g n. a. n. a. 0.525 n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. 36.900 16.000
Young plant tray g n. a. n. a. 13.444 n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. 6.300 6.300
Fertilizer g 31.579 45.127 21.853 7.179 46.667 16.931 130.190 10.427 4.291
Plant protection g 1.444 1.444 0.193 0.159 0.544 0.646 0.139 0.100 0.100
Packaging e carton g 114.800 114.800 115.800 91.840 n. a. n. a. n. a. 1.400 19.200
Packaging e plastic g 25.667 25.667 24.480 24.600 n. a. n. a. 3.100 24.956 25.247
Foil g 15.000 15.002 n. a. 2.435 0.859 n. a. n. a. 0.500 <0.001
Compost g n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. 529.100 n. a. n. a. n. a.
Nutrient sugar l n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. 0.002 0.002 0.010 n. a. n. a.
Machine oil l 0.420 <0.001 <0.001 <0.001 0.133 0.133 n. a. n. a. n. a.
Petrol l n. a. 0.002 <0.001 0.017 0.019 0.006 n. a. n. a. n. a.
Disinfecting l n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. 0.008 0.015
Wood sticks g n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. n. a. 20.000 26.000

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12 5

2007; Ro€o€ s, 2013). However, it is considered to be too high for 3. Results

some countries (Bouwman et al., 2002; Staaf, 2004). Scha €fer and
Blanke (2012) suggest that 0.8% is an appropriate value for Ger- 3.1. PCF of asparagus, strawberries, roses and orchids produced and
many in the region of Nordrhein-Westfahlen. Since our study was used in Germany
also carried out in this region, we used the suggested value of
0.8%. The total PCF value consist of the pre-production and produc-
tion, transportation and the consumer stage PCF (Fig. 1), whereas
2.7. Hotspots the best case scenario emissions are as shown in legend and the
average consumer scenario emissions are the sum of the “Best” and
We identified the hotspots as an absolute amount of emitted the “Average” case. The worst case emissions are the sum of the
GHG from one material or process and as a percentage of the “Best”, “Average” and the “Worst” case.
contribution to the final PCF. All materials or processes which Asparagus, strawberries and open field roses have lower PCF
contributed at least 0.1 kg CO2e or 10% to the total PCF were values remaining under 3 kg CO2e with the average and under 14 kg
considered as hotspots. In our definition, a process was the most CO2e with the worst case consumer scenario. Orchids and green-
detailed unit included in the model, e.g. in the case of packaging, house roses are all above 4 kg CO2e and below 9 kg CO2e including
electricity use and packaging material were separately the average consumer behaviour and above 21 kg CO2e when the
accounted. worst case consumer scenario is considered.
Production in a greenhouse in the case of strawberries, roses
and orchids cultivation results in higher emissions than the field
2.8. Allocation work. Our results showed that heating in the greenhouse resulted
in 20e80% of PCF for strawberries, 38e92% for roses and 10e64%
All production processes resulted in only one output. Similarily for orchids.
to Ro€o
€ s (2013), in the case of waste handling, system expansion was The transport by truck from the producer to the point of sale was
used to account for the electricity produced in the incineration in the most cases around 100 km with one exception of the distance
plants. Part of the waste from the producers and consumers was being 600 km. In the analysed supply chains transport even up to
delivered there. In this case, the waste was the source of energy and 600 km did not cause high emissions due to the full loads of the
it helped to avoid an equal amount of GHG emissions through a used trucks.
heat and steam production system based on the German average
energy mix. If the waste was composted, occurring methane (CH4), 3.2. Life cycle stages
nitrous oxide (N2O), carbon monoxide (CO) emissions were
accounted. Current section presents the proportional contribution of each
In the average consumer scenario, the emissions resulting from life cycle stage to the total PCF. The results are summarized in Fig. 2
the shopping trip by car were allocated between the products ac- where life cycle stages are grouped by the consumer scenarios and
cording to the weight. organised according to the products.
The results in Fig. 2 show that either the production or the
2.9. Comparison of products from different countries consumer stage contributes the most often the majority of the
emissions. Only in the open field strawberry production with the
To compare the PCF of German asparagus, strawberries, roses best case consumer scenario the transport sums up to 69% and with
and orchids with the same products produced and in some cases the average consumer scenario 49%. In another ten analysed sys-
also consumed abroad we conducted a literature review. For some tems transport contributes between 5 and 22%, and in 17 systems
studies about products from other countries, the results were transport contributes less than 1%.
available only until the end of the production stage. Therefore, for The pre-production and production stage contributes nine times
the comparisons we limited the system boundary of all studies over 90% and all together 17 times over 50% of total emissions. Only
until the point of sale or until if no data was available separately for four times it sums up to less than 5% of the PCF. The latter results
these two stages. occurred only in combination with the worst case consumer

Pre-producon and producon Transport to the point of sale Best Average Worst
kg CO2 e/funconal unit 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32

Field Marketer
Asparagus

Field Sales stalls

Heated field Marketer
Heated field Sales stalls
Strawberries

Field Marketer
Field Sales stalls
Greenhouse Marketer
Field 1
Roses

Field 2
Greenhouse
Orchids

Sustainable
Convenonal

Fig. 1. PCF of asparagus, strawberries, roses and orchids with the best, the average and the worst case consumer scenario.

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
6 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12

Fig. 2. Contribution of life cycle stages to the PCF.

scenario. Orchids, greenhouse strawberries and greenhouse roses, for heated asparagus, the electricity used for the field heating
and asparagus from the soil heating cultivation system have the system, and for the roses, the composting after the use by the
production stages with the highest contributions. However, even customer. Consumer transport ranked as hotspot each time when
then the production stage ranked second after the worst case the consumer used a private car for the shopping trip and it was the
consumer stage in the case of orchids, greenhouse strawberries and only common hotspot for all products.
asparagus with the soil heating. Regarding the greenhouse or heated soil production systems,
The average consumer scenario contributes between 3 and 8% in electricity use for the production and after harvest, and heating in
the case of orchids, greenhouse roses and greenhouse strawberries. the greenhouse were the most often occurring hotspots. For the
In other analysed systems it contributes between 24 and 71%. The open field production, the soil management and the electricity use
best case consumer scenarios contribute between 1 and 39%, the during or after the production were the most important hotspots. In
worst case scenarios 60e99%. In six cases the consumer stage the consumer stage also washing dishes whenever applicable and
summed up to less than 5% and four times it was over 95%. cooking or baking also made a relevant contribution.
Cooking the asparagus or using strawberries in a cake contrib- Interestingly, strawberries and asparagus as well as roses and
uted to the final PCF between 6 and 14%, storing the product in a orchids have four common hotspots. At the same time, asparagus
fridge contributed up to 1%, washing dishes or vase in the case of and roses have five common processes which counted as hotspots.
strawberries, asparagus or roses contributed 1e10% to the PCF, and It shows that the hotspots from different product groups, e.g. food
consumer shopping trip by private car contributed 3e97%. and decoration plants, may be just as similar as of products from
the same group, e.g. food products strawberries and asparagus. In
3.3. Hotspots this case, the production system determines more common hot-
spots than the actual product.
The hotspots for each analysed product and production system Fertilizer use, packaging, composting by the producer or by the
are presented in Table 5 starting from the most often occurring consumer, plastic details used as part of the product (orchids) and
hotspot. In total 19 different hotspots were identified. Transport in transport by truck to the sales stalls were hotspots for single
the second life cycle stage ranked only once as hotspot. All other products only. Raw material and waste transport, pesticides, her-
hotspots were either in the production or consumption life cycle bicides, insecticides and other chemicals, foil to cover the soil in
stages. asparagus production, storage at the producer, marketer and con-
For the open field strawberries, customer transport was the sumer, waste management and young plant production (except for
number one hotspot (Table 5). For asparagus, it was the field work, orchids) never ranked as hotspots in PCF analysis.

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12 7

Table 5
Hotspots in 36 analysed production systems. The number under the product name represents “¼the number of times the process was a hotspot (the number of times the
process contributed at least 0.1 kg CO2e/the number of times the process contributed at least 10% to the total PCF)”.

Hotspot Times Asparagus Strawberries Roses Orchids

mentioned

Consumer transport 24 8 (8/8) Private car 6 (6/5) Private car 6 (6/5) Private car 4 (4/2) Private car
Electricity (production) 15 6 (6/6) Heated field 3 (3/0) Greenhouse 6 (6/2) Both systems
Soil management 15 12 (12/8) Both systems 2 (0/2) Field 1(0/1) Field
Washing dishes 13 4 (4/0) Field and heated field: 6 (3/3) Field: the best 3 (3/0) Field and greenhouse:
the worst case consumer scenario and average consumer the worst case consumer scenario
scenario, greenhouse:
the worst case scenario
Cooking/baking 11 8 (8/3) Average and the worst 3 (3/3) The worst case
case consumer scenarios consumer scenarios
Electricity (after harvest 10 6 (6/1) Heated field 4 (0/4) Field: the best and the
cleaning, sorting) average case consumer scenarios
Composting (consumer) 6 6 (6/4) The average and the best
consumer scenarios
Electricity (plantlings) 6 6 (6/2) Both systems
Heating (coal) 6 3 (3/3) Greenhouse 3 (3/3) Conventional
Heating (gas) 6 3 (3/3) Greenhouse 3 (3/2) Sustainable
Heating (wood) 6 3 (3/0) Greenhouse 3 (3/0) Sustainable
Heating-plantlings (gas) 6 6 (6/2) Both systems
Package (carton) 6 6 (6/2) Marketer
Fertilizers 4 1 (0/1) Field: the best case 3 (3/0) Conventional
consumer scenario
Composting (production 3 3 (3/2) Field
leftovers)
Electricity (laboratory) 3 3 (3/0) Conventional
Package (plastic) 3 3 (3/2) Field: marketer
Pot, clips, palette 3 3 (3/0) Conventional
Truck use for transport to 1 1 (0/1) Field: sales stalls
the sales stalls

4. Discussion option to choose green asparagus which has not been transported
by plane.
4.1. Comparison of PCFs
4.1.2. Strawberries
4.1.1. Asparagus The Fig. 4 shows the comparison of strawberries produced in
In Fig. 3, the PCFs of asparagus from different countries Germany and in other countries. In contrast to roses and aspar-
including transport to the point of sale are compared with aspar- agus, strawberries had the smallest PCFs reaching up to 4 kg
agus produced and consumed in Germany. If asparagus was CO2e per kg of product. In the analysed studies (Gunady et al.,
transported by plane from Mexico and Peru to Switzerland 2012; Lillywhite et al., 2007; PCF Pilot Project Germany, 2009b;
(Climatop, 2009; Stoessel et al., 2012), the emissions were several €
Sorgüven and Ozilgen, 2012; Stoessel et al., 2012; The Co-
times higher than when it was transported by truck or ship (Blanke operative group, 2009; Williams et al., 2008; Yoshikawa et al.,
and Schaefer, 2012; Climatop, 2009; Morgan et al., 2007; Stoessel 2008; this study), the strawberries were not transported by
et al., 2012; this study) (see Fig. 3). The PCF of asparagus trans- plane. The strawberries produced in Japan (Yoshikawa et al.,
ported by ship or truck remained under 2 kg CO2e per functional 2008) were cultivated in a greenhouse and had the highest
unit. The PCF of asparagus, which is produced and consumed in emissions.
Germany, performed equally. In this study the PCF was between 0.5 In the Australian production system, the agricultural machinery
and 0.7 kg CO2e from an open field without heating and between operation contributed 58% of the total GHG emissions (Gunady
1.5 and 1.6 kg CO2e from an open field with soil heating. The use of et al., 2012). Strawberry production was highly mechanized,
soil heating in this study did not make PCF exceed the 2 kg CO2e which required intensive machinery operations especially during
level because in the analysed production system the heat was a cultivation, thus explaining the high GHG emissions (Gunady et al.,
waste product from a nearby industry and therefore no additional 2012). As a result, the emissions were higher than in German
GHG emissions were accounted for. Heating related emissions only greenhouse and in other open field cultivation systems. Also
resulted from the electricity use for the pumps which transported Marseni et al. (2010) concluded that the GHG emissions due to the
the warm water. According to the asparagus producer (personal farm machinery operation are relevant since they are directly
communication), it is economically only feasible to heat asparagus related to fossil fuel consumption, while the GHG emitted from
with the waste heat since the regular energy price would be too transporting the inputs are usually negligible. In our study, farm
high. machine operations accounted for 44% emissions in the production
The asparagus can be stored up to a week while it is still fresh stage in the open field strawberries production.
enough for being sold (asparagus producer, personal communica-
tion). According to Stoessel et al. (2012) white asparagus can be 4.1.3. Roses
transported from Peru to Europe by ship which is a climate The PCF of roses was between 0.4 kg CO2e and 29 kg CO2e across
friendlier alternative to the air freight. However, green asparagus is all analysed studies (Fig. 5). The PCF of open field roses from Kenya
still not transported by ship from overseas due to substantial losses (Williams, 2007), Ethiopia (Sahle and Potting, 2013) and Germany
(Stoessel et al., 2012). This leaves many consumers without the (this study) was in the range of 0.4e3.7 kg CO2e. Williams (2007)

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
8 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12

kg CO2e/1kg asparagus
Morgan et al. (2007) green asparagus
14
Morgan et al. (2007) green

Stoessel et al. (2012) green

Transport by air
12 Stoessel et al. (2012) white

Stoessel et al. (2012) white

Stoessel et al. (2012) white, air transport

10
Climatop (2009) white, air transport

Stoessel et al. (2012) white

8 Climatop (2009) white

Morgan et al. (2007) green

Stoessel et al. (2012) white

6 Stoessel et al. (2012) green, air transport

Climatop (2009) green, air transport

Climatop (2009) white

4
Climatop (2009) white and green

Blanke and Schäfer (2012) white

Transport by truck and/or ship
2 this study-sales stalls, white

this study-marketer, white

this study-heated field sales stalls, white

0
Producing USA Switzerland Slovenia Peru Marocco Mexico Hungary Germany this study-heated field marketer, white
country

Fig. 3. PCF of asparagus produced in different countries in comparison to the results of this study where asparagus were produced in Germany. The PCFs include transport to the
country where the product is consumed.

concluded that even if the air freight including the radiative forcing (Williams, 2007) grown in natural gas heated greenhouses. Ac-
effect resulting from high altitude was considered, the emissions cording to Torrellas et al. (2012b), the Dutch rose PCF was similar to
from the Dutch greenhouse roses were about six times higher than the results of this study. Also Russo (Russo et al., 2008; Russo and
the Kenyan ones. German greenhouse roses (this study) with coal De Luzia Zeller, 2008), Parrado et al. (2011) and Mungozza et al.
based heating only summed up to a half of the Dutch roses (2007) researched the environmental impact of roses but they did

kg CO2 e/1kg strawberries

4 Williams et al. (2008) average of different soil
producon systems
Lillywhite et al. (2007) under polythene

The Co-operave (2009) peat bag

The Co-operave (2009) soil

3
PCF Pilot Project (2009b) macrotunnel, LCA
method
PCF Pilot Project (2009b) macrotunnel, PAS
2050 method
Williams et al. (2008) average of different soil
producon systems
2 The Co-operave (2009) tunnels

Yoshikawa (2008) greenhouse

Gunady et al. (2012) field

Sorgüven and Özilgen (2012) soil

1
Stoessel et al. (2012) soil

this study-field, sales stalls

this study-field, marketer

0 this study-greenhouse, peat bag, marketer

Producing UK Spain Japan Australia Turkey Switzerland Germany
country

Fig. 4. PCF of strawberries produced in different countries in comparison to the results of this study where strawberries were produced in Germany. For PCF Pilot Project (2009b)
and Yoshikawa et al. (2008) the PCF includes all processes according to the methods until the end of life at the consumer stage. For the other studies, the PCFs include all processes
until reaching the point of sale.

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12 9

kg CO2e/10 cut roses case of asparagus. In our study, the respective result was 0.5 kg
30 Torrellas et al. CO2e. It contributed 45% to the PCF in case of sales stalls and 41% in
(2012b) greenhouse case the asparagus was sold at the supermarket. Also the PCF Pilot
25 Williams (2007) Project Germany (2009b) considered the consumer shopping trip
field, air transport in their research and concluded that it was 15% according to the LCA
20 Williams (2007) methodology and 20% if PAS 2050 (BSI, 2011) was used. Interest-
greenhouse ingly, PAS 2050 (BSI, 2011) recommends excluding consumer
Sahle and Pong shopping trip, but some studies included it (PCF Pilot Project
15
(2013) Germany, 2009b; Scha €fer and Blanke, 2012). We also included it
this study-field 1 in our study since we considered it to be a relevant source of
10 emissions.
this study-field 2
5 4.3. Hotspots
this study-
0 greenhouse There is no clear definition of hotspots or respective method-
Netherlands Kenya Ethiopia Germany
ology for the PCF analysis. Some authors referred to the LCA to
Fig. 5. PCF of roses produced in different countries in comparison to the results of this
determine the hotspots (e.g. Himeno et al., 2012), others to
study where roses were produced in Germany. midpoint modelling (e.g. Page et al., 2012). The term “hotspots” was
used equivalently to “the main contributors” (e.g. Torrellas et al.,
2012a; PCF Pilot Project Germany, 2009b). We found only one
not provide a GWP as a single numeric result and therefore the study which refers to the hotspots with a defined percentage of the
results could not be compared. total PCF. There, a hotspot was “a substance originating from a
cluster of processes within the production chain that contributed
4.1.4. Orchids more than 40% to one of the environmental impact categories”
The PCF of orchids in our case study was 4.2 kg CO2e in the (Dekker et al., 2008: 381).
sustainable production system and 7.8 kg CO2e in the conventional In our study, we defined a process as hotspot if it contributed
production system. However, no reference values from other over 10% or 0.1 kg CO2e to the PCF (Table 5). Gunady et al. (2012)
studies for orchid PCF were available. concluded that although an emission source may result in being
only the second or third biggest hotspot it may still contribute a
4.2. Contribution of life cycle stages relevant amount of GHG such as electricity use for lettuce, straw-
berry and mushroom production in his study. Therefore, in this
We found that the pre-production and production stage study we also paid attention to all significant contributors and not
contributed half of times over 50% of total emissions of the analysed only to the first or second biggest GHG emitting process. Electricity
products. The research on tomatoes showed that for all greenhouse for rose production, washing dishes in the case of asparagus or
production systems the cultivation stage was an important source washing the vase used for roses, fertilizers for growing the orchids,
of emissions contributing 54e82% of PCF within cradle-to-plate heating with wood chips or pellets, and plastic used for flower pot,
(Page et al., 2012). Our results are consistent with the previous clips and palette did not cross the 10% threshold, but always
research which has identified heating requirements as a priority contributed at least 0.1 kg CO2e. On the other hand, soil manage-
source of GHG emissions (Jungbluth et al., 2000). In this study, in ment of strawberries and roses, sorting of roses and truck use for
the case of strawberries, 78% of PCF resulted from the cultivation in strawberry transport to the sales stalls appear to be hotspots in
greenhouse. For roses, it was 96% and for orchids 45% in the sus- certain production systems, but in absolute value they contribute
tainable system and 73% in the conventional system. only little, less than 0.1 kg CO2e. The mitigation strategies according
Emissions from transport can be a major contributor to the total to Arteconi et al. (2010) and Nemecek and K€ agi (2007) (see Table 6)
PCF for fruits and vegetables (Sim et al., 2007; Weber and would only make a significant contribution in the case of asparagus.
Matthews, 2008). Page et al. (2012) report that in case of field According to Ro €o€s (2013), the GHG emissions from energy
production, the transportation of tomatoes from the farmgate to consumption in agriculture arise mainly from combustion of fuels
the market was the highest contributor with 38% of the PCF within used in field machinery, transport and for heating greenhouses, the
cradle-to-plate. Our findings for strawberries transport to the su- use of fossil energy sources for crop drying, lighting, ventilation and
permarkets were similar (49%). However, strawberries transport to for the production of mineral fertilisers, machinery and buildings.
the sales stalls only contributed 6%. According to Blanke and The results were similar in our study. We found that the biggest
Schaefer (2012), the asparagus transportation to retail was 12% of amount of energy related emissions in agriculture resulted in
PCF. Our findings show lower transport emissions: 1.5% if the electricity use for greenhouse orchids and roses and heated
asparagus were sold at the supermarket and 9% if the asparagus asparagus, fuel use for soil management in the case of strawberries
were transported to the sales stalls. Roses transport summed up to and asparagus and after production electricity use for open field
8% and 16% from different fields. Since the products analysed in this asparagus and roses. Avoiding soil heating in the case of asparagus
study were sold within a few hundred kilometres from the pro- would reduce the asparagus production related PCF by 54%. If all
duction location, transport was not a relevant contributor to the production related electricity would come from renewable energy
PCF. sources, the effect on the PCF would be a reduction between 1 and
Consumer stage is often excluded from the analysis, because 60% (Table 6). If renewable energy would be used for the green-
gaining sufficient data on the consumer stage is a time-consuming house heating, the effect would be even more remarkable.
and costly process. At the time of carrying out this research, there Scha€fer and Blanke (2012) concluded in his results carried out in
was no widely accepted methodology for analysing the consumer Germany that neither a reduction in the use of nitrogen fertiliser
stage of horticultural products. Blanke and Schaefer (2012) report nor a reduction in plant protection would significantly affect or
that the use phase consisting of the shopping tour, fridge use and reduce the PCF. Any reductions in both would result in lower yields,
cooking at the consumer amounted to 0.3 kg CO2e or 38% in the thereby increasing the PCF (Sch€ afer and Blanke, 2012). In contrast,

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
10 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12

Table 6
GHG emissions mitigation possibilities for the most important hotspots with the reduction potential based on the results of this study and in some cases based on other
literature (according to Li, 2014).

Hotspot and how many Asparagus Strawberries Roses Orchids

times as hotspot

Consumer transport 24 Shopping trip by bike or on foot. Shopping trip by bike or on foot. Shopping trip by bike or on foot. Shopping trip by bike or on foot.
Reduction potential 12e23% Reduction potential field: 24 Reduction potential field: 24% Reduction potential 2e3%
(average), 73e74% (worst). e45% (average), 80e83% (average), 97% (worst), (average), 74e85% (worst).
(worst), greenhouse: 5% greenhouse: 2% (average), 60%
(average), 63% (worst). (worst).
Electricity e production 15, No soil heating or the use of Use of renewable energy. Use of renewable energy.
after harvest 10 renewable energy. Reduction Reduction potential: 10e14% Reduction potential: 3e25%
potential (soil heating): 15 (field, best and average), 1e3% (non-renewable electricity).
e60%. (greenhouse).
Soil management 15 Use of liquefied natural gas as See asparagus See asparagus
fuel instead of diesel. Reduction
potential: 10% (Arteconi et al.,
2010). Use of multi-tasking
farm machinery and keeping it
in good order (Nemecek and
K€agi, 2007).
Washing dishes 13 Use of energy efficient dish Use of energy efficient dish Use of energy efficient dish
washer with full load and washer with full load and washer with full load and
renewable energy. Reduction renewable energy. Reduction renewable energy. Reduction
potential: 3e4%. potential: 1e25%. potential ca. 1%.
Cooking/baking 11 Use of renewable energy. Use of renewable energy.
Reduction potential: 8e14%. Reduction potential: 11e14%.
Heating e coal 6, gas 6 Use of renewable sources. Use of renewable sources. Use of renewable sources.
Reduction potential in the case Reduction potential in the case Reduction potential in the case
of gas: 19e74%. Sourcing of coal: 38e92%. See also of coal 15e58%, in the case of
products from warmer strawberries. gas 8e56%. See also
countries or using waste heat strawberries.
from other processes (Climatop,
2009; Morgan et al., 2007;
Stoessel et al., 2012).

in the Mediterranean area agricultural products are excessively respective reduction potentials for the cooking or baking and
fertilised and by reducing the fertilizer by a third the yield would washing dishes.
not be affected but the climate impact would be reduced (Mun ~ oz
et al., 2008). In our research results, fertilizer production and in
many cases the application played no substantial role in the GHG 5. Conclusion
emissions. For example, asparagus fertilizing was below 5% in every
production system, for field roses it was 13% and 7% in different 5.1. The PCF of horticultural products produced in Germany have a
fields, for orchids and greenhouse roses it was around 1% and for broad range
strawberries 3% if the strawberries were transported to the super-
market, and 8% if they were sold at the local sales stalls. We calculated the PCF of important German horticultural
Consumers can influence the PCF of horticultural products in products asparagus, strawberries, roses and orchids in different
two alternative ways. One is choosing seasonal products, avoiding production systems including the consumer stage based on
transport by airplane and preferring local products if no green- empirical data. The results show that.
house heating with fossil fuels is involved (Stoessel et al., 2012). The
other is related to the product use or consumption starting at the  the PCF of asparagus is 0.7e6.3 kg CO2e,
point of sale. We confirmed that transport from the retail outlet to  the PCF of strawberries is 0.1e10.2 kg CO2e,
the customer's home shows great variability; either it can have very  the PCF of roses is 0.6e21.6 kg CO2e, and
little impact (on foot) or a large impact (by private car) (Ro€o
€ s, 2013).  the PCF of orchids is 4.3e30.8 kg CO2e.
According to our findings, the average customer transport
contributed 1e37% and according to the worst case scenario Our study confirmed that a product cannot have a precise PCF
60e97% to the PCF. The consumer can reduce the product carbon value and depending on the additional heating use, transport type
footprint by the use of public transport, car share, low emission and consumer behaviour it is only possible to determine a broad
vehicles, bicycle or walking rather than fossil fuel-powered private range of the PCF.
vehicles. It would decrease the carbon footprint by nearly 90% The PCFs of all analysed products varied between countries as
(Scha €fer and Blanke, 2012). According to our results, with the well as within the same country. Roses grown in Dutch green-
average consumer scenario, the reduction would be much lower houses (Williams, 2007) had remarkably higher emissions than any
(see Table 6). open field roses system, Kenyan roses transported by plane and
Consumers also use energy to refrigerate and cook foods and to German roses cultivated in a greenhouse. Asparagus transported
wash the dishes (Amani and Schiefer, 2011). When Ro €o€ s (2013) with air freight had several times higher PCF than asparagus
compared the cradle-to-plate PCF of pasta and potatoes, the final transported by truck or ship, regardless of the soil heating or pro-
result depended on the food cooking efficiency. In our research, ducing country. For strawberries, no clear pattern emerged. No
cooking asparagus, baking strawberries and washing dishes or comparable data were available for orchids. German products
vase also made a significant contribution. Table 6 presents the performed equally to its foreign competitors.

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12 11

Clearly, more PCF analyses are necessary to map out the climate Bayerische Staatsregierung, 2014. „Anstich“ auf dem Münchner Viktualienmarkt e
Brunner ero €ffnete die bayerische Spargelsaison 2014. http://www.bayern.de/
impact in different horticultural production systems. A wider va-
Pressemitteilungen-.1255.10493151/index.htm.
riety of indicators, for example as a LCA or product environmental Berekoven, L., Eckert, W., Ellenrieder, P., 2001. Marktforschung. Methodische
footprint analysis, should be assessed to provide answers about the Grundlagen und praktische Anwendung, nineth ed. Gabler, Wiesbaden.
environmental superiority of any particular product. Blanke, M., Schaefer, F., 2012. Application of PAS 2050-1 supplementary re-
quirements for horticultural products: carbon footprint of pumpkin and
asparagus. In: Corson, M.S., van der Werf, H.M. (Eds.), Proceedings of the 8th
5.2. Consumer stage contributes significantly to the PCF International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment in the Agri-food Sector (LCA
Food 2012). France, Rennes, pp. 353e357.
Bouwman, A.F., Boumans, L.J.M., Batjes, N.H., 2002. Modeling global annual N2O and
Although half of times pre-production and production contrib- NO emissions from fertilized fields. Glob. Biogeochem. Cycles 16, 28e31.
uted over 50% of the total PCF, customers are responsible for a large BSI, 2011. PAS 2050:2011 Specification for the Assessment of the Life Cycle
part of the PCF, too. Their average shopping trip and product use Greenhouse Gas Emissions of Goods and Services. British Standardisation
Institution (PAS 2050:2011).
summed up between 3 and 71%, and between 1 and 99% if extreme BSI, 2012. PAS 2050-1:2012 Assessment of Life Cycle Greenhouse Gas Emissions
optimistic or pessimistic behaviour patterns were considered. from Horticultural Products. The British Standards Institution, 13.020.40. http://
Transportation to the point of sale had only minor impact on the www.bsigroup.com/upload/Standards%20&%20Publications/Energy/PAS2050-1.
pdf (accessed 05.04.12.).
PCF of our example products. Statistisches Bundesamt, 2014a. Obst, Gemüse, Gartenbau. Erdbeeranbau nach
The use of private car for the shopping trip was an important Betrieben, Anbaufla €chen, Ertrag und Erntemenge 2012. https://www.destatis.
contributor to the PCF. Also purchasing multiple food items did not de/DE/ZahlenFakten/Wirtschaftsbereiche/LandForstwirtschaftFischerei/
ObstGemueseGartenbau/Tabellen/Erdbeeren2012.html.
balance out the high contribution. A climate friendlier way would Statistisches Bundesamt, 2014b. Obst, Gemüse, Gartenbau. Betriebe, Anbaufl€ achen,
be bringing the goods as close to the consumers as possible so that Ertra€ge und Erntemengen von Gemüse 2012. https://www.destatis.de/DE/
they can go shopping on foot or by bike. However, since this is not ZahlenFakten/Wirtschaftsbereiche/LandForstwirtschaftFischerei/
ObstGemueseGartenbau/Tabellen/BetriebeAnbauErntemengeGemuese2012.
always possible, an alternative could be developing efficient home
html.
delivery services. Several supermarkets are developing their online Carbon Trust, 2011. International Carbon Flows. Automotive. http://www.
shops and offer the possibility to have the products delivered home. carbontrust.com/media/38401/ctc792-international-carbon-flows-automotive.
pdf (accessed 20.11.13.).
Additionally, in many cities in Germany farmer co-operations offer
Cellura, M., Ardente, F., Longo, S., 2012a. From the LCA of food products to the
a regular home delivery or sell regional and seasonal horticultural environmental assessment of protected crops districts: a case-study in the
products during a drive through the neighbourhood. Current south of Italy. J. Environ. Manage 93, 194e208.
research showed that the transport of goods with trucks or cars in Cellura, M., Longo, S., Mistretta, M., 2012b. Life cycle assessment (LCA) of protected
crops: an Italian case study. J. Clean. Prod. 28, 56e62.
large quantities did not result in high PCF. Delivering goods to Climatop, 2009. Klimabilanz: Frische Spargeln. http://www.migros.ch/mediaObject/
several consumers in the same neighbourhood with well-planned migros_ch/Download-Dokumente/de/Factsheet-Spargeln-d/original/
route would have similarly low PCF. Further studies should be FactsheetþSpargelnþd.pdf (accessed 13.11.13.).
Close the Loop, 2013. Case Study: Olive Oil Carbon Footprint. http://www.
carried out on the home delivery services to determine the most closetheloop.gr/sites/default/files/news/documents/Case%20Study%20SELLAS-
efficient system for the PCF reduction. EN.pdf (accessed 19.11.13.).
Dekker, S.E.M., Boer, I.J.M., Aarnink, A.J.A., Groot Koerkamp, P.W.G., 2008. Envi-
ronmental hotspot identification of organic egg production. In: Nemecek, T.,
5.3. Emission hotspots depend more on customers' behaviour and Gaillard, G. (Eds.), 6th International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment in the
productions systems than on specific products Agri-food Sector. Towards a Sustainable Management of the Food Chain,
pp. 381e389.
Deutscher Wetterdienst, 2014. Klimadaten. Klima þ Umwelt. http://www.dwd.de/
Number one hotspot for each product and production system bvbw/appmanager/bvbw/dwdwwwDesktop?_nfpb¼true&_pageLabel¼_
was the customer shopping trip by private car. Customers also dwdwww_klima_umwelt_klimadaten_
created a significant impact by using energy for washing dishes and deutschland&T82002gsbDocumentPath¼Navigation%2FOeffentlichkeit%
2FKlima__Umwelt%2FKlimadaten%2Fkldaten__kostenfrei%2Fdaten__
cooking or baking the products. In the production process, elec-
gebietsmittel__node.html%3F__nnn%3Dtrue.
tricity, heating and soil management were also important con- Dirksmeyer, W. (Ed.), 2009. Status quo und Perspektiven des deutschen Pro-
tributors. Which processes ranked as hotspots depended more on duktionsgartenbaus. VTI, Braunschweig.
Ecoinvent Centre, 2010. Life Cycle Inventory Database Ecoinvent Version 2.2.
the production system than on the product itself. Interestingly,
Frühschütz, L., 2012. Erdbeeren: Kurze Saison, Lange Wege. http://schrotundkorn.
fertilizer production and application played a less relevant role. de/lebenumwelt/lesen/201205b02.html.
For all these hotspots the most efficient reduction method is Galli, A., Wiedmann, T., Ercin, E., Knoblauch, D., Ewing, B., Giljum, S., 2012. Inte-
switching to renewable energy sources. Further research is neces- grating ecological, carbon and water footprint into a “Footprint Family” of in-
dicators: definition and role in tracking human pressure on the planet. Ecol.
sary to find out which cooperation systems such as the waste heat Indic. 16, 100e112.
use in the case of asparagus production would also bring climate Greenhouse Gas Protocol, 2011. Product Life Cycle Accounting and Reporting
benefits. Standard. http://www.ghgprotocol.org/files/ghgp/Product%20Life%20Cycle%
20Accounting%20and%20Reporting%20Standard.pdf (accessed 10.08.12.).
Gunady, M.G., Biswas, W., Solah, V.A., James, A.P., 2012. Evaluating the global
Acknowledgements warming potential of the fresh produce supply chain for strawberries, romaine/
cos lettuces (Lactuca sativa), and button mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) in
Western Australia using life cycle assessment (LCA). J. Clean. Prod. 28, 81e87.
The authors thank Prof. Dr. Klaus Menrad from the University of Himeno, A., Gustavus, L., Teixeira, R., 2012. Environmental and nutritional assess-
Applied Sciences Weihenstephan-Triesdorf, project ment of Breton pa ^te
 production. In: Corson, M.S., van der Werf, H.M. (Eds.),
WeGaeKompetenznetz Gartenbau, and TUM Grad School for the Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Life Cycle Assessment in the
Agri-food Sector (LCA Food 2012). France, Rennes, pp. 358e363.
support and guidance. Special thanks go to all asparagus, straw- IPCC, 2007. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report:
berries, roses and orchids producers who provided data on for the Climate Change 2007. Contribution of Working Groups I, II and III to the Fourth
research. Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. http://
www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/publications_ipcc_fourth_assessment_
report_synthesis_report.htm (accessed 12.03.13.).
References Jensen, J.K., 2012. Product carbon footprint developments and gaps. Int. J. Phys.
Distrib. Logist. Manag. 42, 338e354. IJPD & LM.
Amani, P., Schiefer, G., 2011. Data availability for carbon calculators in measuring Jungbluth, N., Tietje, O., Scholz, R.W., 2000. Food purchases: impacts from the con-
GHG emissions produced by the food sector. Int. J. Food Syst. Dyn. 2 (4), sumers' point of view investigated with a modular LCA. Int. J. LCA 5, 134e142.
392e407. Landwirtschaftskammer Nordrhein-Westfalen, 2011. Landwirtschaft in Nordrhein-
Arteconi, A., Brandoni, C., Evangelista, D., Polonara, F., 2010. Life-cycle greenhouse gas westfalen. http://www.landwirtschaftskammer.de/wir/pdf/landwirtschaft-in-
analysis of LNG as a heavy vehicle fuel in Europe. Appl. Energy 87, 2005e2013. nrw.pdf.

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
12 E. Soode et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production xxx (2014) 1e12

Li, B., 2014. Product Carbon Footprint Results and Mitigation Opportunities for greenhouse cultivation. In: Pascale, Mugnozza, Scarascia, et al. (Eds.), Pro-
Horticultural Products with the Examples of Strawberries, Asparagus, Roses and ceedings of the International Symposium, pp. 1597e1604.
Orchids (masters thesis). Russo, G., Buttol, P., Tarantini, M., 2008. LCA (Life cycle assessment) of roses and
Lillywhite, R., Chandler, D., Grant, W., Lewis, K., Firth, C., Schmutz, U., Halpin, D., cyclamens in greenhouse cultivation. In: Pascale, Mugnozza, Scarascia, et al.
2007. Environmental Footprint and Sustainability of Horticulture (Including (Eds.), Proceedings of the International Symposium, pp. 359e366.
Potatoes) e a Comparison with Other Agricultural Sectors. Final Report Pro- Sahle, A., Potting, J., 2013. Environmental life cycle assessment of Ethiopian rose
duced for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. http:// cultivation. Sci. Total Environ. 443, 163e172.
citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?rep¼rep1&type¼pdf&doi¼10.1.1.184. Sch€
afer, F., Blanke, M., 2012. Farming and marketing system affects carbon and
5795 (accessed 12.11.13.). water footprint e a case study using Hokaido pumpkin. J. Clean. Prod. 28,
Marseni, T.N., Cockfield, G., Maroulis, J., 2010. An assessment of greenhouse gas 113e119.
emissions: implications for the Australian cotton industry. J. Agric. Sci. 148, Sim, S., Barry, M., Clift, R., Cowell, S.J., 2007. The relative importance of transport in
501e510. determining an appropriate sustainability strategy for food sourcing. Int. J. Life
Morgan, D., Cook, R., Radenovic, H., Renzi, S., 2007. Seattle Food System Enhance- Cycle Assess. 12, 422e431.
ment Project. Neighborhood Food System Assessment. Program on the Envi- €
Sorgüven, E., Ozilgen, M., 2012. Energy utilization, carbon dioxide emission, and
ronment Certificate in Environmental Management. http://courses.washington. exergy loss in flavored yogurt production process. Energy 40, 214e225.
edu/emksp06/SeattleFoodSystem/Final_Food_Report.pdf (accessed 13.11.13.). Staaf, H., 2004. Methodology for calculating N2O emissions from agricultural soils in
Mungozza, G.S., Russo, G., De Luzia Zeller, B., 2007. LCA methodology application in Sweden e remarks on national emission factors. In: Prepared for the Expert
flower protected cultivation. In: Cantliffe, D.J. (Ed.), Proceedings of the Inter- Meeting on Improving the Quality of Greenhouse Gas Emission Inventories for
national Symposium on Advances in Environmental Control, Automation and Category 4 D, pp. 21e22. October 2004, Ispra, Italy. https://www.google.de/
Cultivation Systems for Sustainable, High-quality Crop Production under Pro- search?q¼MethodologyþforþcalculatingþN2Oþemissionsþfromþagricultural
tected Cultivation. Seoul, Korea August 13-19, 2006. International Society for þsoilsþinSweden,þremarksþonþnationalþemissionþfactors.&ie¼utf-
Horticultural Science, Leuven, pp. 625e632. 8&oe¼utf-8&rls¼org.mozilla:de:official&client¼firefox-a&channel¼fflb&gws_
Mun ~ oz, P., Anto
n, A., Paranjpe, A., Arin ~ o, J., Montero, J.I., 2008. High decrease in rd¼cr&ei¼-IipUtqENaGF4AS5-oHQBQ (accessed 12.12.13.).
nitrate leaching by lower N input without reducing greenhouse tomato yield. Stoessel, F., Juraske, R., Pfister, S., Hellweg, S., 2012. Life cycle inventory and carbon
Agron. Sustain. Dev. 28, 489e495. and water FoodPrint of fruits and vegetables: application to a Swiss retailer.
Nemecek, T., Ka €gi, T., 2007. Life Cycle Inventories of Agricultural Production Sys- Environ. Sci. Technol. 46, 3253e3262.
tems. Data v2.0. ecoinvent report No. 15. http://www.upe.poli.br/~cardim/PEC/ The Co-operative group, 2009. Sustainability Report 2008/09. http://www.co-
Ecoinvent%20LCA/ecoinventReports/15_Agriculture.pdf (accessed 11.02.13.). operative.coop/corporate/sustainability-report-2011/downloads/sustainability-
Page, G., Ridoutt, B., Bellotti, B., 2012. Carbon and water footprint tradeoffs in fresh report-2008.pdf (accessed 12.11.13.).
tomato production. J. Clean. Prod. 32, 219e226. Torrellas, M., Anto n, A., Lo  pez, J.C., Baeza, E.J., Parra, J.P., Mun
~ oz, P., Montero, J.I.,
Parrado, C.A., Bojac a, C.R., Schrevens, E., 2011. Exploring more sustainable techno- 2012a. LCA of a tomato crop in a multi-tunnel greenhouse in Almeria. Int. J. Life
logical alternatives for the greenhouse cut flowers industry in Colombia. In: Cycle Assess. 17, 863e875.
Dorais, M. (Ed.), Proceedings of the International Symposium on High Tech- Torrellas, M., Anto n, A., Ruijs, M., García Victoria, N., Stanghellini, C., Montero, J.I.,
nology for Greenhouse Systems. GreenSys2009 : Que bec City, Canada, June 14- 2012b. Environmental and economic assessment of protected crops in four
19, 2009. ISHS, Leuven, Belgium, pp. 1125e1132. European scenarios. J. Clean. Prod. 28, 45e55.
PCF Pilot Project Germany, 2008. Case Study Shampoo by Henkel AG & Co.KGAA. Weber, C.L., Matthews, H.S., 2008. Food-Miles and the relative climate impacts of
Documentation. Case Study Undertaken within the PCF Pilot Project Germany. food choices in the United States. Environ. Sci. Technol. 42, 3508e3513.
http://www.pcf-projekt.de/files/1236586214/pcf_henkel_shampoo.pdf Williams, A., 2007. Comparative Study of Cut Roses for the British Market Produced
(accessed 20.11.13.). in Kenya and the Netherlands. Pre cis Report for World Flowers. http://www.
PCF Pilot Project Germany, 2009a. Product Carbon Footprinting e the Right Way to fcrn.org.uk/sites/default/files/Cut_roses_for_the_British_market.pdf (accessed
Promote Low Carbon Products and Consumption Habits? Experiences, Findings 10.08.12.).
and Recommendations from the Product Carbon Footprint Pilot Project Ger- Williams, A., Pell, E., Webb, J., Moorhouse, E., Audsley, E., 2008. Strawberry and
many. Project Results Report. http://www.pcf-projekt.de/files/1241103260/ tomato production for the UK compared between the UK and Spain. In:
lessons-learned_2009.pdf (accessed 11.12.13.). Nemecek, T., Gaillard, G. (Eds.), 6th International Conference on Life Cycle
PCF Pilot Project Germany, 2009b. REWE Group „Best Alliance“-Früherdbeeren. Assessment in the Agri-food Sector. Towards a Sustainable Management of the
http://www.pcf-projekt.de/files/1233585432/poster_rewe_erdbeeren.pdf Food Chain, pp. 254e262.
(accessed 11.11.13.). Yoshikawa, N., Amano, K., Shimada, K., 2008. Evaluation of Environmantal Load on Fruits
PE International, 2013. Life Cycle Assessment Software GaBi Including Professional and Vegetables Consumption and its Reduction Potential. http://www.ritsumei.ac.
Database. Version 6, Stuttgart. jp/se/rv/amano/pdf/2008EBJ-yoshikawanaoki.pdf (accessed 05.02.14.).
Ro€o
€s, E., 2013. Analysing the Carbon Footprint of Food. Insights for Consumer Zafiriou, P., Mamolos, A.P., Menexes, G.C., Siomos, A.S., Tsatsarelis, C.A.,
Communication (Doctoral thesis, Uppsala). Kalburtji, K.L., 2012. Analysis of energy flow and greenhouse gas emissions in
Russo, G., De Luzia Zeller, B., 2008. Environmental evaluation by means of LCA organic, integrated and conventional cultivation of white asparagus by PCA and
regarding the ornamental nursery production in rose and sowbread HCA: cases in Greece. J. Clean. Prod. 29-30, 20e27.

Please cite this article in press as: Soode, E., et al., Carbon footprints of the horticultural products strawberries, asparagus, roses and orchids in
Germany, Journal of Cleaner Production (2014), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2014.09.035
View publication stats