Strategies, technologies and policies recommendations aimed at a more sustainable food and beverage sector in Argentina

ALEJANDRO PABLO ARENA; BARBARA CIVIT; SILVIA CURADELLI; FERNANDO MELE; ROXANA PIASTRELLINI; GLORIA RÓTOLO; LEILA SCHEIN

Nueva York

Conferencia; 8th Multi-stakeholder Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals - STI Forum; 2023

Naciones Unidas

The food and beverage sector not only must play a leading role in the pursuit of the goal of endinghunger in the world, but also in ensuring sustainable conditions for the future. In this sector, SDG 12becomes essential for decoupling the required increasing provision of food from resourceconsumption and environmental degradation. The first pilot of the application of the SCP HATmethodology (Life Cycle Initiative, 2018) held in Argentina, showed that the Food and Beverage (F&B) is one of the most vulnerable sectors in the country. This finding motivated a deeper study to find the critical aspects where Life Cycle Tools can help to achieve a more sustainable Production and Consumption System. This document represents a synthesis and an update of the results obtained during that process, and provides an insight into the environmental hotspots occurring along the productive chains of the food and beverage sector in Argentina, considering their core processes, their supply chains, and the cross-cutting issues, like packaging, transportation, energy, etc. It is derived from the results of Life Cycle Analyses performed on different products of this sector, as well as a series of stakeholder consultations held in 2020 and 2021. The document also contains sector-specific improvement opportunities, potential barriers to their implementation, and policy recommendations that stem from the results and the stakeholder’s consultations.This document aims at supporting decision-makers seeking to improve the environmentalperformance of this sector, based on a Life Cycle perspective, and the insight given by stakeholders from the different productive chains. The document also contains a series of infographics (in Spanish) designed for easy communication of the main findings for each food product.