Combining Life Cycle Assessment of food products with economic tools

The economic counterpart of LCA, known as Environmental Life Cycle Costing (LCC), is of increasing concern for LCA practitioners. Just lìke LCA, LCC may concern food products. Yet, the literature provides few applications of LCC to food products and, more generally, to nondurable products; moreover, the methodologies adopted vary significantly within the available studies. Other examples of combined environmental-economic tools for the assessment of food products include applications of Input-Output Analysis along with Material Flows Analysis (MFA) and LCA. These combinations aim at studying the way materials and substances flow through the economy and applications in these fields are well established ones. The main results achieved by such diverse combinations of tools are discussed here, especially those which are of managerial relevance. An effort will also be made to highlight the peculiarities that may be taken into account in future applications, when carrying out economic analysis concerning food products, combined with environmental analysis.