Standardized environmental footprints for organic food clusters: Addressing LCA data gaps

Summary

Organic foods are increasingly recognized for their role in sustainable and healthy diets, yet comprehensive environmental footprint data remain limited. Most existing life cycle assessments (LCA) focus on climate impacts for a small subset of foods, with few addressing broader indicators such as biodiversity loss, ecotoxicity, and soil carbon changes, which can differ between organic and conventional systems (Hashemi et al., 2024). To support informed dietary choices and procurement, there is a need to estimate environmental impacts for organic foods lacking direct LCA data. This study develops a clustering approach based on nutritional and environmental profiles of organic food items to generate standardized estimates for environmental footprint of unassessed organic foods.