LED 4 Food Project

Businesses often struggle to access and share consistent environmental impact data, hindering effective action to tackle and accurately report their environmental impact. 

The LED 4 Food project, delivered by WRAP and partners including Oxford University and WWF, aims to overcome this barrier by improving the understanding, reporting, and management of environmental impacts within the food system.

Funded by Defra, this research project focuses on enhancing the quality and availability of standardised environmental impact data and infrastructure.

Building on previous work with Defra, LED 4 Food aims to:

• Create a robust evidence base to support decision-making in the agrifood sector.
• Streamline and scale up environmental impact data collection and sharing.
• Enable sector-wide data-driven action to reduce negative environmental impacts.

Agrifood businesses will be able to more accurately and consistently estimate and report on environmental data, empowering them to take informed action.

Impact on the UK Food Sector

• HESTIA database: The project will expand the HESTIA database, providing a trusted source of high-quality environmental impact data, enabling modelling policy options to reduce environmental impacts and evaluate their effectiveness.
• Data harmonization: By standardizing environmental impact data formats, businesses can integrate this data into their systems more easily.
• Web application: A new app will allow users to access and download granular environmental data, facilitating reporting and support back-end uses such as eco-label development.
• Promote best practice approaches: Recommendations on LCA methodology will help businesses collect and report product-level environmental impacts, supporting future eco-labelling and policies.

Project aims

Running from March 2024 to March 2027, LED 4 Food has four main objectives:

1. Improve the quality and specificity of environmental impact data
2. Enable easy sharing and use of data through standardised formats
3. Develop a free web application for accessing HESTIA data
4. Provide LCA methodology recommendations for product-level footprinting.