Photo by Julia Cilleruelo Palomero | Cuba

Circularity Food Package for openLCA

Documentation & case study example
openLCA version 2.0
Date 19th July 2023
Version 2
Author: Julia Cilleruelo Palomero
LCA Consultant & Communications
[email protected]

GreenDelta GmbH
Kaiserdamm 13
14057, Berlin
Germany

1
 Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................ 4

2 Motivation................................................................................................................................................... 4

3 Methodology .............................................................................................................................................. 4

4 How to implement circularity in your model? ................................................................................... 7

4.1 Case 1 – Creation of a process that makes a primary material, or product ........................ 9

4.2 Case 2 – Creation of a secondary material dummy process (burden free) ......................... 9

4.3 Case 3 – Creation of a process that makes a secondary material or product .................... 9

4.4 Case 4 – creation of a process that produces secondary material as an outcome ......... 10

5 Case study example: organic, local, tomato juice production ...................................................... 12

5.1 Case study presentation and base case results........................................................................ 12

5.2 Circularity plan ................................................................................................................................. 17

5.3 Application of the circularity plan in openLCA: ........................................................................18

5.4 Results & Conclusions ................................................................................................................... 20

6 How to obtain the database? ................................................................................................................ 21

7 Appendix: formulas for circularity indicators................................................................................... 22

Funded by

2
List of Figures
Figure 1 LCA results for 1 kg of broiler at beginning feed ......................................................................... 6
Figure 2 Circularity variable results for 1 kg of broiler at beginning feed ............................................ 6
Figure 3 Integrated python script for calculating circularity indicators in Agribalyse ...................... 7
Figure 4 This window allows to enter variables that are usually not consistently found in LCA,
like life time of a product or utility ................................................................................................................ 7
Figure 5 These elementary flows represent circularity variables and are found in relevant
processes in the Agribalyse database ........................................................................................................... 8
Figure 6 Circularity variables placed in a system process in the Agribalyse database ..................... 8
Figure 7 Process that uses energy and produces a primary material or product ............................. 10
Figure 8 Shadowing secondary material ..................................................................................................... 11
Figure 9 Process for a product that uses secondary material ................................................................ 11
Figure 10 Process showing recovered material .......................................................................................... 12
Figure 11 Cradle-to-gate flow diagram of the production of one bottle of tomato juice, base case
...............................................................................................................................................................................14
Figure 12 The Circularity LCIA Method is used to show circularity variable results across the
supply chain........................................................................................................................................................ 15
Figure 13 Results per circularity variable are seen at the impact analysis tab .................................. 16
Figure 14 The contribution tree tab can help you understand where hotspots lie within a supply
chain .................................................................................................................................................................... 16
Figure 15 Processes for the production of secondary steel to be used in the greenhouse. ............ 19
Figure 16 Transport process for tomatoes from farming to processing ............................................. 20

List of Tables
Table 1 Boundaries of the values that the circularity indicators can take............................................ 5
Table 2: Summary of elementary flows for circularity and how they are placed in the database 9
Table 3: Hotspots of the base case model ................................................................................................... 17
Table 4: Results for circularity variables and indicators for the base case and the improved case,
for 1kg of tomato juice .................................................................................................................................... 20

3
1 Introduction
The Circularity Food Package for openLCA, is the commercialised product of the TRIPLELINK
research project, funded by the EIT Raw Materials.

This report first describes the motivation and methodology behind the Circularity Food Package
database. The next sections describe how to make a circular model and use the database for
that purpose, where a practical example is also offered as a reference at the end. The case
study model can be obtained for free here:
https://nexus.openlca.org/casestudy/Other%20free%20case%20studies

2 Motivation
Both LCA as a tool and Circular Economy as a concept work towards sustainable development,
only that both approaches are currently done individually: one assessment doesn’t include the
other. Circular Economy, measured by circularity indicators, can benefit hugely from a life cycle
perspective, where circularity is considered not only in the last production stages but from the
very beginning of raw material extraction.

The Circularity Food Package is based on Agribalyse, a database of reference in the agri-food
sector in LCA developed by the French Agency for an Ecological Transition (ADEME1). The way
that Agribalyse is modelled gives space for an enhancement to also track circularity indicators
that can offer additional information for the interest of Circular Economy in this specific sector.

3 Methodology
The materials considered for circularity are generally defined as materials taken from nature that
are non-renewable. A virgin material is considered a material that is not from reuse, recycling or,
for the purposes of this methodology, not from biological materials from Sustained Production.

The Agribalyse database was modified to track the circularity variables, by adding elementary
flows that shadow the following circularity elements:

• Recycled material flows

• Virgin material flows
• Total waste for final disposal
• Waste from recycling processes

1
https://www.ademe.fr/
4
 • Waste from the production of secondary material feedstock
• Energy required for primary material production
• Energy required for secondary material production
Hence, the database can now calculate supply chain results for LCA (Figure 1) and circularity
(Figure 2).

Collecting this information is already useful for the visualization of the product’s supply chain in
terms of circularity. However, these variables can be further processed to calculate the following
Circularity Indicators:

Material Circularity Indicator (MCI) – developed by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and Granta
Design2. It looks at how the material flows in a product’s life cycle, including reuse and recycle
material flows for circularity, and also the length and intensity of the product’s use.

Circularity Index (CI) – from a scientific publication by Cullen, 20173. Looks at recovered material
vs. total material demand, but most interestingly, it also takes into account the energy required
for material production, both primary and secondary.

The formulation implemented in openLCA for both indicators can be seen in the Appendix (page
22). Generally, a score of 1 defines a fully circular system, whilst a score of 0 for the CI and 0.1 for
the MCI defines a fully linear system, as summarised in the table below.

Table 1 Boundaries of the values that the circularity indicators can take

Fully linear system Fully circular system

MCI 0.1 1
CI 0 1

A python script was incorporated to the database, see Figure 3, to allow the calculation of
circularity indicators. When running it, it will display a user-friendly window allowing the input
of other variables for circularity outside LCA and displaying the circularity indices, Figure 4. These
extra variables required are:

• Life time of your product compared to average

• Number of uses of your product compared to average values

2
https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/material-circularity-indicator
3
Cullen, Jonathan M. (2017). Circular Economy: Theoretical Benchmark or Perpetual Motion Machine?.
Journal of Industrial Ecology, (), –. doi:10.1111/jiec.12599
5
 Figure 1: LCA results for 1 kg of broiler at beginning feed

Figure 2: Circularity variable results for 1 kg of broiler at beginning feed

6
 Figure 3: Integrated python script for calculating circularity indicators in Agribalyse

Figure 4: This window allows to enter variables that are usually not consistently found in LCA, like life time of a
product or utility

4 How to implement circularity in your model?

The database is prepared to trace circularity down the supply chain. Each relevant process has
shadowing elementary flows that carry information about circularity at that particular step. See
Figure 5 for what variables are traced by the database and an example implementation in Figure
6.

7
Figure 5: These elementary flows represent circularity variables and are found in relevant processes in the Agribalyse
database

Figure 6: Circularity variables placed in a system process in the Agribalyse database. This information was obtained
from the ecoinvent database, and passed on to the Agribalyse database.

For your information, Table 2 briefly explains the criteria used when placing elementary flows
for circularity in the database.

8
Table 2: Summary of elementary flows for circularity and how they are placed in the database

Elementary flow Where is it used?

Energy required for primary production Energy used in a process which makes a primary
material or product
Energy required for secondary production Energy used in a process which produces
secondary material, such as a recycling process
Recovered end of life materials Amount of material recovered that can be used
again in the market, per process
Recycled material This flow shadows materials that are burden free,
if they are positive inputs then they are recycled
materials used, if they are negative inputs then
they are secondary materials produced by the
process.
Total waste produced This is shadowed at the end of the supply chain,
usually at the level of incineration or landfill.
Virgin material Virgin material extracted from earth
Waste from recycled feedstock production Shadows waste from processes that produce
secondary material
Waste from recycling Shadows waste from recycling processes

When making a model that has circular elements, the modeller must make sure that the
shadowing elementary flows are placed in the model. The database already contains such flows,
but the modeller might need to add extra in the following cases:

4.1 Case 1 – Creation of a process that makes a primary material, or product

Add the elementary flow “energy required for primary production” with the amount of energy
used, as shown in Figure 7.

4.2 Case 2 – Creation of a secondary material dummy process (burden free)

Add the elementary flow “recycled material” as in Figure 8.

4.3 Case 3 – Creation of a process that makes a secondary material or product

Add the elementary flow “energy required for secondary production” to shadow the amount of
energy used in the process, as in Figure 9.

Additionally, if the process is

a) A recycling process, the amount of waste produced at the process should be shadowed
by the elementary flow “waste from recycling (Wc)”

9
 b) A production of secondary feedstock process, the waste produced at the process should
be shadowed by the elementary flow “waste from recycled feedstock production (Wf)”,
see Figure 9.

4.4 Case 4 – creation of a process that produces secondary material as an

outcome
Secondary material produced by a process is shown as negative inputs, following the modelling
of the ecoinvent4 database. This material recovery should be tracked with the elementary flow
“recovered EoL materials”, as shown in the example in Figure 10.

Figure 7: Process that uses energy and produces a primary material or product

4
https://ecoinvent.org/
10
 Figure 8: Shadowing secondary material

Figure 9: Process for a product that uses secondary material

11
 Figure 10: Process showing recovered material

5 Case study example: organic, local, tomato juice production

5.1 Case study presentation and base case results

Happy Farms FR produces tomato juice from fresh, French tomatoes from their own farms. Their
secret formula and the tastiness of the tomatoes has increased the demand for their products to
such an extent that they now look to build new tomato plantations and juicing facility. They
want to take this opportunity to become more circular.

The cradle-to-gate diagram of how their processing looks at the moment is shown in

12
Figure 11. The Agribalyse process "Tomato, average basket, conventional, soil based, non-heated
greenhouse, at greenhouse - FR" is used at the start of the supply chain.

13
Figure 11: Cradle-to-gate flow diagram of the production of one bottle of tomato juice, base case

14
The product system was run with the LCIA Method developed for Circularity, as shown in Figure
12, to get an idea of the hotspots of the model.

Figure 12: The Circularity LCIA Method is used to show circularity variable results across the supply chain

The impact categories of virgin material used, energy for primary production, and total waste
produced were analysed using e.g. the impact analysis tab and the contribution tree (Figure 13,
Figure 14). Higher process contributions to these impact categories meant worse scores in the
circularity indicators.

15
 Figure 13: Results per circularity variable are seen at the impact analysis tab

Figure 14: The contribution tree tab can help you understand where hotspots lie within a supply chain

16
Table 3: Hotspots of the base case model

Identified hotspots Circular economy applied Life Cycle Stage

location
Steel from greenhouse Using secondary material for 1_Tomato farming
infrastructure greenhouse
Transport from tomato plantation Plantation and processing in the same 2_Transportation
to processing site – reduces transport
Biowaste, probably transport here Make compost? 3_Tomato peeling
Peat used in tomato seeding 1_Tomato farming
Fertilizer use Using waste from other industries 1_Tomato farming
(cattle) as fertiliser
Adopting biological pest control and
eliminating pesticide use
Crop rotation (healthier land & higher
production)

5.2 Circularity plan

Further investigation and a sensitivity analysis was made to see how to best design the tomato
plantation and processing facility to increase circularity. The following circularity plan was
considered:

a) Re-thinking the greenhouse structure: a plastic tunnel showed lower contributions than a
bigger greenhouse due to the steel infrastructure. Therefore:
• Use 90% secondary steel frameworks from previous greenhouses
• Use 20% less concrete
• make sure the steel frame is fully taken to recycling at end of life

b) Locate the plantation site next to the processing site

• 15 km of transport from plantation to processing

c) More organic fertilizer, from local farm only 15 km away

• 80% coming from compost
• 20% from rendered animals, to ensure phosphorus supply

17
5.3 Application of the circularity plan in openLCA:

First, the production of secondary steel was modelled as shown in Figure 15. This was used in the
process for the production of the plastic tunnel, where 20% less concrete was also used
compared to the standard plastic tunnel production.

Then, 1320.414 kg of mineral fertilizer was substituted with 1500 kg organic fertilizer (80%
compost and 20% rendered animal) curing the tomato farming process.

Finally, a new process was created for the transport of tomato from the plantation to the
processing plant, with only 15 km distance between them, see Figure 16.

These processes were connected to a similar supply chain for peeling, processing and bottling as
in the base case model.

18
Figure 15: Processes for the production of the structure from secondary steel to be used in the greenhouse.

19
 Figure 16: Transport process for tomatoes from farming to processing

5.4 Results & Conclusions

The product systems were run with the Circularity (GreenDelta, 2023) LCIA Method and the
allocation method “as defined in process”.

Table 4: Results for circularity variables and indicators for the base case and the improved case, for 1kg of tomato
juice

Impact categories Unit base case improved case

energy required for primary production MJ 4.09219 3.9939
energy required for recycled production MJ 0.00267 0.00677
recovered EoL material kg 0.08966 0.08544
recycled material kg -0.08115 -0.07144
total waste produced (W) kg 0.43392 0.18563
virgin material (V) kg 0.34398 0.20613
waste from recycling processes (Wc) kg 0.00161 0.00108
waste from feedstock production, second life (Wf) kg 0.00021 0.00034
MCI 0.23540 0.32739
CI 0.25418 0.38747

From the table above, it can be seen that the circularity scores for both indicators do improve
considerably with the proposed circularity plan, taking into consideration that a score of 1 is a
fully circular model. In fact, the new design uses:

20
 • 40% less virgin materials
• 57% less total waste produced
• 3% less energy

For 50 tonnes of tomato juice produced per year, the savings would scale to:

• 6.7 tonnes of virgin material saved per year

• 12.5 tonnes of waste not being produced per year
• 4,900 MJ (or 1,360 kWh) of energy saved per year

The sustainability team thought that the improvements were very promising and passed the
plan to the finance team to also take into account the difference in costs for both models. After
this, both assessments will be considered and a decision will be made.

6 How to obtain the database?

You can acquire the database licence in our marketplace for data: openLCA Nexus
https://nexus.openlca.org/databases

Licence holders will also have access to maintenance updates.

Do you have any questions? You can contact us following this link:
https://www.openlca.org/contact/

Need support? Book direct support with us through Nexus:

https://nexus.openlca.org/service/openLCA%20Support%20(help%20desk)

21
7 Appendix: formulas for circularity indicators

• V – amount of virgin materials (flow reference id: 8f2148cb-2cf7-4138-a496-

6f2de5a1d04b)
• M – mass of finished product
• L – average life time of product
• Lav – average life time of industrial average of product
• U – average number of units of use
• Uav – average number of units of use of an industrial average
• WC – unrecoverable waste generating in recycling (flow reference id: b1def92b-1ea4-
4277-8d5f-dd99f9f577a6)
• WF – unrecoverable waste when producing recycling feedstock (flow reference id:
bd6325ab-21ee-4a22-a45a-7ccd9e8de307)
• W0 – direct waste produced
• W – total waste produced
• MCIP – Material Circularity Indicator of a product

Material Circularity Indicator

Formulas based on the documentation from the Ellen MacArthur Foundation:

https://ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/material-circularity-indicator

V = Σ(x) V(x) 1

WF + WC 2
W = W0 +
2
Usually the total waste, W, recorded by the LCIA Method for circularity made will be
larger than V because it also takes into account generic waste. For this reason, direct
waste is calculated with formula 3:

WF + Wc 3
W0 = V − ( ) − recovered material
2

If we insert this formula for W0 into the formula for W:

22
 WF + WC 4
W = W0 +
2
The formula for W simplifies to:

W = V − recovered material 5

If this is then inserted into the formula for LFI:

V+W
LFI =
W −W
2M + F 2 C 6

We can get rid of having to calculate W at all by simply calculating LFI like this:

2V − recovered material
LFI =
2M + F
W − WC 7
2

𝐿 𝑈 8
𝑋= .
𝐿𝑎𝑣 𝑈𝑎𝑣

0.9 9
𝐹(𝑋) =
𝑋

𝑀𝐶𝐼𝑃 = 1 − 𝐿𝐹𝐼 ⋅ 𝐹(𝑋) 10

𝑀𝐶𝐼𝑃 = 𝑚𝑎𝑥 (0, 𝑀𝐶𝐼𝑃 ) 11

Circularity Index
Formulas obtained from

Cullen, Jonathan M. (2017). Circular Economy: Theoretical Benchmark or Perpetual Motion

Machine?. Journal of Industrial Ecology, (), –. doi:10.1111/jiec.12599

recovered EoL material 12

α=
total material demand

energy required to recover material 13

β=1−
energy required for primary production

23
CI = αβ 14

CImax = 1 15

24