Version 3.3 of the ecoinvent database includes a first part of the World Food LCA Database (WFLDB).
large variety of new data
The first part of the WFLDB being included in version 3.3 covers several hundreds of new agricultural datasets, amongst other in the fields of:
- vegetables (such as asparagus, carrots, onions, potatoes)
- fruits (such as lemons, mandarins, oranges, peaches)
- cereal and grain products (such as oat, rice, sweetcorn, wheat)
- tea
- coffee (such as Robusta and Arabica)
- sugar and confectionery (such as cocoa and vanilla)
distinction between technologies & categories
For many products you can choose production in different countries and using different technologies.
So you can, for example, choose between strawberry production in the open field, non-heated greenhouse or even in heated greenhouse.
Futhermore, a distinction is made between fresh grade and processing grade.
prices for all products
In ecoinvent 3.3, price data are available for all the products (except for waste materials and their disposal) in the database. These prices were collected from literature, directly from the producers or calculated based on the input materials entering the activity. While this is a significant step towards a more consistent and reliable database, some price data are quite uncertain still. Nevertheless, these prices can be used for economic allocation, life cycle costing or when working with social LCA data.
Improved markets and supply chains
Some sectors have had their supply chains improved with more specific, local data. The largest examples are waste treatment activities in Europe and Switzerland, and supply chains specifically in Switzerland.
pdf documentation of every dataset
Comprehensive and easy to access documentation is vital to better understand the dataset you are working with in context. One of the major steps in ecoinvent version 3 was to include more information directly in the dataset. While software tools decide themselves how to display ecoinvent data, we now offer the dataset documentation in a pdf file for every dataset. This pdf contains both unit process information as well as some key impact assessment results, which makes the information in ecoinvent datasets more accessible for all our users. Find an example of pdf documenation here.
