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