Food processors' view on carbon footprinting : Describing carbon footprinting practices in Finnish food industry

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides qualitative evidence on CF practices and barriers in the food sector, informing future research on carbon accounting standards and supply-chain measurement.

🏢実務担当者:Illustrates practical strategies—external partnerships, supplier collaboration, and internal model building—for overcoming CF measurement challenges.

🏛政策担当者:Supports the case for clearer CF standards and targeted guidance on production-stage emission data.

The threat of climate change drives the world leaders to mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally and food sector among others is under pressure to reduce its emissions rapidly. That requires changes in production methods and consumer habits. One necessary tool for enhancing greener food consumption is to provide consumers with information about food products climate impact. There are wide variation of different carbon footprinting (CF) methods, calculators, and approaches available, which without proper standardization com-promises the comparability of CF results.
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\nThis thesis contributes to the literature by gathering insight from companies’ perceptions over the topic. This is done by interviewing Finnish food processors by semi-structured inter-views. The companies were asked about their current state of CF and the measures they have taken to enable or improve CF. It was found that the companies seem to perceive CF as a complex function. They have challenges with defining the scope of CF methods and con-cretely measuring the emissions, especially on production stage. The companies tend to solve this complexity by collaborating with external organizations to gain more expertise and data sources, collaborating with own supply chain partners to gain information from the processes within the supply chain, and developing own environmental impact models to identify all the sources of emissions.
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\nThe results of this thesis support the view that more standardization is needed to enable globally comparable and reliable carbon footprints for food products. Especially the produc-tion stage, which often is not owned by the focal companies in food chain, needs more sup-port and guidelines to gather emission data. As for further research recommendations the findings of this thesis reveal that the similar study conducted on food producers instead of focal companies might reveal the problems closer to the emission measurement and thus tell us what should the CF guidelines and tools take into account better.

• openalex https://www.utupub.fi/handle/10024/150601first seen 2026-08-02 18:50:50