WHAT IS PEFMED
PEFMED stands for “Uptake of the Product Environmental Footprint across the MED agri-food regional productive systems to enhance innovation and market value”.
The overall objective of the PEFMED project, developed by a highly representative partnership, is to test the applicability of the new EU Product Environmental Footprint method (PEF) for some specific product groups in 9 Mediterranean agri-food regional systems (clusters & supply chains), with the final aim to foster targeted systemic eco-innovation interventions to green the agri-food sector, raise the market value of PEF-compliant productions and galvanize the regional Smart Specialization Strategies (RIS3) goals related to innovation in agri-food and industrial production.
All project info are available at the official website.
SUSTAINABILITY IN AGRi-food
PEFMED represents the 1st verification in Europe of the environmental PEF standards within given territorial domains: it strengths connection and cooperation between LCA research, eco-innovation experts and agri-food business organization from 6 Mediterranean Countries (Italy, Spain, France, Portugal, Greece and Slovenia) by providing a set of technology, organizative and market intelligence drivers to drive a mind-change in traditional agri-food productions model towards PEF-compliant measures.
The “PEFMED method” takes into account impacts on a product throughout its life cycle, from cultivation of raw materials, through processing, transport and use, to disposal and recycling. Indicators are combined with a set of socio-economic indicators referred to a specific territorial background, to enhance the paradigm of regional denomination quality and sustainability (good and green).
A series of PEF studies to verify the performance of the agri-food clusters towards PEF requirements are implemented in in nine product chains and clusters located in different Mediterranean regions over the following product groups: dairy, meat, olive oil, wine, feed, packaged water.
The novelty of the approach will be then transferred to further agri-food supply chain across the Mediterranean regions, to widen the PEFMED Communities of Practices to new users and to foster interaction schemes among policy and business key-players and then increase the PEFMED legitimization at European level.
The PEFMED results are:
One LCA-based technical report delivered for the concerned nine MED pilot agri-food systems
Elaboration of scenarios of intervention (technological and managerial actions) to improve nine supply chains and cluster environmental footprints and the key social aspects with a territory-based approach;
Customized elements to power up a dedicated marketing strategy implementation to communicate the key environmental performance of the nine product chains through transparency, reliability and comparability
National roadmaps to extend the environmental footprint approach to new MED agrofood supply chains and clusters and to favor SME innovation
Wiki web-platforms to facilitate fast creation, sharing and transfer of collaborative knowledge content in a highly accessible and visible manner
A transnational Community of Practices interconnected and one transferability strategy to export the PEFMED method to new clusters
The PEFMED successful stories are available at the PEFMED project blog