Browsing by Author "Chatterton, Julia"

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    Assessing the environmental impacts of healthier diets. Final report to Defra on project FO0427
    (2018-09-27) Williams, Adrian; Morris, Joe; Audsley, Eric; Hess, Tim; Goglio, Pietro; Burgess, Paul; Chatterton, Julia; Pearn, Kerry; Mena, Carlos; Whitehead, Peter
    Summary: oncern about the public health impacts of dietary habits in the UK have led to initiatives to encourage healthier eating, notably in the dietary guidelines represented of the eatwell plate (FSA, 2007) and the Eatwell Guide (NHS, 2016c). A change in UK dietary habits towards healthier eating would result in changes in the type and quantities of food items in the national diet, with implications for agricultural, food and allied industries. More specifically, this could lead to changes in land use and farming practices, both for the UK and its trading partners, with associated effects on greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental impacts. In this context, and sponsored by Defra, this study set out using a series of scenarios to assess the environmental impacts of changing dietary habits and specifically the adoption of healthier eating in the UK, and in broad terms some of the likely social and economic impacts on the agricultural and food sector, through a set of hypothetical scenarios. The main objectives were to: i) determine the consumption of food under possible future food consumption scenarios in the UK, including the eatwell plate; ii) quantify the production of agricultural commodities needed to meet the food needs of each scenario; iii) quantify the environmental impacts of food commodity production and consumption by scenarios, and iv) identify, in broad terms, the possible economic and societal impacts of dietary changes.
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    Carbon Brainprint: quantifying the impact of universities on carbon footprint reduction
    (Cranfield University, 2019-02-13 11:37) Parsons, David; Chatterton, Julia; Clements-Croome, Derek; Elmualim, Abbas; Darby, Howard; Yearly, Tom; Davies, Gareth; Wilson, Ian; Ishiyama, Edward
    Universities make tremendous intellectual and technical advances that help other organisations and individuals reduce their own carbon footprints. This is the universities€™ carbon brainprint, and measuring this allows universities to quantify the impact of their research, innovation and knowledge transfer activities on cutting global GHG emissions. It provides further endorsement of the value of investing in universities such as Cranfield to address the challenge of global warming. The initial project developed a set of approaches to estimating the carbon brainprint of an activity, such as research, development, consultancy or training. These were applied to six case studies from Cranfield, Cambridge and Reading Universities, which demonstrated the large impact that higher education institutions can have. A summary of the final report is attached, as well as a summary of each of the six case studies: 1. Ceramic coatings for jet engine turbine blades, Cranfield University and Rolls-Royce. Summary pdf attached; read full case study. 2. Novel offshore vertical axis wind turbines, Cranfield University and Energy Technologies Institute. Summary pdf attached; read full case study. 3. Improved delivery vehicle logistics, Cranfield University and Defra. Summary pdf attached; read full case study. 4. Training for landfill gas inspectors, Cranfield University and Environment Agency. Summary pdf attached; read full case study. 5. Intelligent buildings, University of Reading and HEFCE. Summary pdf attached; read full case study. 6. Optimising defouling schedules for oil-refinery preheat trains, University of Cambridge and EPSRC. Summary pdf attached; read full case study. Additional project outputs are: - The final report at http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/6805. - The guidance on calculating brainprints at http://dspace.lib.cranfield.ac.uk/handle/1826/8236. - The 2015 paper €˜Carbon brainprint €“ An estimate of the intellectual contribution of research institutions to reducing greenhouse gas emissions€™ published in Process Safety and Environmental Protection 96, 74€“81. Available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psep.2015.04.008. - The 5min35 summary video of the project at https://youtu.be/9GSjDaWO9dQ. The Carbon Brainprint project was highly commended at the 2011 Green Gown Awards in the research category.
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    The impact of changing food choices on the blue water scarcity footprint and greenhouse gas emissions of the British diet: the example of potato, pasta and rice
    (Elsevier, 2015-09) Hess, Tim; Chatterton, Julia; Daccache, Andre; Williams, Adrian
    Food production is a major contributor to a country's environmental burden. However, the burdens associated with individual foods vary significantly due to differing agricultural systems and locations, post-harvest storage, manufacturing and transport requirements. Dietary choices can therefore have a significant impact on the overall burdens associated with food consumption. Previous studies have generally considered changes in the proportion of animal-based foods in the diet or changes to a vegetarian, or a vegan diet. Using a life cycle assessment approach and data from published sources supplemented by original analysis, we estimated the blue water scarcity footprint and greenhouse gas emissions associated with the production, manufacture and distribution of three popular starchy carbohydrate foods as consumed in the United Kingdom – British fresh potatoes, Italian dried pasta and Indian dried basmati rice. Although similar to pasta in terms of greenhouse gas emissions per unit carbohydrate, when considered on the basis of typical portion size, potatoes have lower greenhouse gas emissions than pasta or basmati and the blue water scarcity footprint of basmati is two orders of magnitude greater than potatoes or pasta. The increasing preference for pasta and rice and reduction in household purchases of fresh potatoes in the United Kingdom over the period 1981–2010 has resulted in an increase in blue water scarcity footprint and a transfer of burdens from the United Kingdom to Italy and India, however the increased greenhouse gas emissions associated with rice and pasta has been, more or less, compensated by a reduction in emissions associated with purchases of potatoes. This paper has shown that dietary choices within food groups (in this case starchy carbohydrates) have a significant impact on an individual's contribution to greenhouse gas emissions and blue water scarcity footprint. The life cycle assessment approach is useful for understanding where the impacts of dietary choices occur and can inform the supply chain about where efforts should be targeted to reduce those impacts.
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    Plausible future scenarios for the UK food and feed system - 2015 and 2030. Report for the UK Food Standards Agency
    (Cranfield University, Institute for Environment, Health, Risk and Futures (IEHRF), 2014-06) Garnett, Kenisha; Delgado, João; Lickorish, Fiona; Medina-Vayá, Ángel; Magan, Naresh; Shaw, Hayley; Rathé, Anna; Chatterton, Julia; Prpich, George; Pollard, Simon; Terry, Leon A
    The report describes the key drivers of the wider environment which informed the development of the scenarios. There are case studies of three representative food types, which illustrate how the scenarios may be used to explore triggers for change in food production and supply in the next 20 years, and what the emerging food safety implications might be under each scenario.
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    The water footprint of Irish meat and dairy products
    (Cranfield University, 2012-02-29) Hess, Tim M.; Chatterton, Julia; Williams, Adrian
    The water consumption of a range of dairy and beef production systems was estimated for four locations in Ireland using the Cranfield Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) systems model. This included direct water consumption (for drinking, washing, cleaning, etc.) as well as virtual water in the diet (that is, water that had been used to grow grass and concentrate feedstuffs). This was partitioned into “blue” water that is abstracted from rivers or groundwater, or taken from mains water supplies, and “green” water that is rain water used by growing plants at the place where the rain falls. In general, intensive systems have a lower water consumption per unit of output than extensive systems as the higher water consumption per head is offset by high output. The water consumption of dairy-beef systems is lower than for suckler beef because most of the water use by the dairy cow is allocated to the dairy system, whereas for suckler systems, the water use of the suckler cow is included for the first year. It is clear that the vast majority of the total water consumption for all the systems studied is green water. It can be argued that green water use has negligible environmental impact as it has a low, or negligible opportunity cost. The rain water consumed by growing grass or feed crops could only be used for growing alternative vegetation, that is, it could not be used to substitute for water for domestic or industrial consumption for example. Therefore, there is no water benefit in saving green water. The blue water consumption is very small for both milk and beef under all systems. Drinking water accounts for almost half of the blue water used by dairy systems, and almost all of that consumed by beef systems. Therefore, technologies that reduce the wastage / leakage in on farm drinking water systems can reduce the overall water consumption. For dairy systems the remainder of the blue water consumption is associated with milk cooling and cleaning of the milking parlour and yards. The amount of blue water associated with growing feed is trivial. For dairy, twice as much blue water is consumed in the processing of milk compared to the livestock and feed systems. For dairy-beef and suckler beef, blue water consumption on the farm 2.5 and 7.4 times as much as used in the processing stage respectively. Most water use on Irish livestock farms is from groundwater (90%) and mains water (10%). Generally, widespread abstraction pressures on groundwater are not significant in Ireland and the impact of water use would be expected to be small, however, there are some localised cases where abstraction pressures are impacting on groundwater levels (EPA, 2008). This highlights the very local scale of hydrological impacts and suggests that even though the average water consumption of Irish beef and dairy production is very small, in certain places it may be contributing to depletion of groundwater resources and water conservation may be encouraged. The Water Stress Index can be used to normalise the blue water consumption and to derive an index of water equivalent (H2Oe) that reflects both the volume of blue water consumed and relative stress on water in the producing region. For dairy systems, the normalised water footprint of milk production (at the farm gate) ranges from 0.12 litres H2Oe/litre fat and protein corrected milk (FPCM) for high yielding autumn calving systems in the south of Ireland to 0.17 for low-yielding, spring calving systems in the south-east. For beef systems, the normalised water footprint of milk production (at the farm gate) ranges from 0.24 litres H2Oe/kg for extensive dairy beef systems in the south of Ireland to 0.98 for autumn calving, extensive finishing systems in the south-east. These figures are very low compared to other livestock producing regions.