Intensive agriculture has led to significant soil degradation and nutrient surpluses in the EU, prompting the need for more sustainable practices. Organic agriculture is often considered a strategy to produce food more sustainably, albeit with challenges such as yield reduction. Here, we estimate the impacts of expanding organic agriculture to 25% of agricultural land in the EU and UK—a key target of the European Commission's...

Aim Global biodiversity loss resulting from anthropogenic land‐use activities is a pressing concern, requiring precise assessments of impacts at large spatial extents. Existing models mainly focus on species richness and abundance, lacking insights into ecological mechanisms and species' roles in ecosystem functioning. To bridge this gap, we conducted an extensive analysis of the impact of human land use on vascular plant func...

Despite the many benefits of greenhouses, it is challenging to meet their heating demand, as greenhouses belong to the most energy‐intensive production systems in the agriculture sector. Industrial symbiosis can bring an effective solution by utilizing waste heat from other industries to meet the greenhouse heat demand. This study proposes an optimization framework by which optimum symbiotic relationships can be identified. Fo...

Biodiversity loss, driven by human activities, significantly affects the environment, human societies, and economies. Using the extended multi‐regional input–output (EEMRIO) and life cycle assessment (LCA) techniques, we offer insights into how these methodologies can be used to inform financial decisions related to biodiversity focusing on two key aspects: biodiversity impacts and ecosystem service dependencies. Our method co...

Life cycle inventory (LCI) databases, such as ecoinvent, are crucial for life cycle assessment (LCA), but lack country‐specific resolution in activity details and trade between regional activities in the supply chain. For example, ecoinvent only provides rest‐of‐world and European datasets for photovoltaic panel production, consuming the same global consumption mix of photovoltaic cells. Global or continental activities and tr...

Sub-optimal dietary patterns make major contributions to the Global Burden of Disease and are among the most pressing issues affecting human health. Consequently, they are key to consider when assessing the human health and other environmental impacts of foods and diets within life cycle assessments. The UN Environment Life Cycle Initiative convened a task force on nutrition-related human health impacts as part of the Global L...

Purpose Recent developments in life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) target at better addressing biodiversity impacts, including the extended modeling of drivers of biodiversity loss. This led to the development of multiple LCIA methods addressing the area of protection of ecosystem quality (i.e, biodiversity loss) over time. This paper aims at systematically comparing available operational LCIA methods and models for assessing...

To remain within the limits of the planetary boundaries and address increasing disease rates due to poor eating habits, there needs to be a major shift in dietary patterns. The composition of an optimal diet changes depending on location, season, and personalized dietary needs. We develop a methodology to build a 500+ food item, nutrient, and environmental impact database specific to a given country and month, which includes s...