A study on ecolabeling and Life Cycle Assessment for food products in Indonesia: Potential application to improve the competitiveness of the tea industry

Abstract

The increasing customer awareness and supporting regulation on environmentally-friendly products around the globe has fostered the need for revealing environmental performance information on their label, using an instrument called ecolabel. Ecolabeling system requires a life cycle consideration for the product, and Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) serves as a method to perform the assessment for the entire product’s life cycle. In the field of food industry, specifically the tea industry, a 2014 report by International Institute for Sustainable Development showed a growing influence of ecolabel in the global market. Ecolabel and LCA become important tools for improving product competitiveness. Meanwhile, tea as one of Indonesia’s main commodity has faced a challenging competition in the international market as indicated by decreasing export—despite increasing global demand—in recent year. This study reviews the ecolabeling system in Indonesia and LCA for food products. Furthermore, this study also investigates the potential application of ecolabel and LCA to improve the competitiveness of the tea industry. According to the study, the implementation of ecolabeling for tea still faces some challenging issues due to the supporting certification scheme and customer perspective. On the contrary, research on LCA for food products provides a promising application to improve tea product competitiveness. Therefore, this study recommended that, while educating people more toward ecolabeling, research on LCA should be continuously conducted to support the implementation of ecolabel in the long term.

Analysis of eco-label certification implementation on eco-friendly products in Indonesia

“…In 1994, the initiation of eco-label activities in Indonesia began. The Ministry of Forestry (at that time) formed a working group tasked with developed criteria and indicators for assessing the sustainability of forest management, where this process was the pioneer to the formation of an organization called The Indonesian Eco-Label Institute (LEI) [10]. However, the development of eco-label certification and accreditation of manufacturer product started in 2006 [33], it followed by the issuance of the Minister of Environment Regulation No.…”

“…Eco-label is a concept developed almost all over the world in maintaining environmental quality and sustainability [9][10][11]. Eco-label is a voluntary instrument in the form labelling or marking on a product, produced through a certification process carried out by an independent party, as a result of an assessment IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1108/1/012002 2 the conformity of environmental performance throughout the life cycle of a product based on the required criteria [9,10,[12][13][14][15][16][17].…”

“…Eco-label is a concept developed almost all over the world in maintaining environmental quality and sustainability [9][10][11]. Eco-label is a voluntary instrument in the form labelling or marking on a product, produced through a certification process carried out by an independent party, as a result of an assessment IOP Publishing doi:10.1088/1755-1315/1108/1/012002 2 the conformity of environmental performance throughout the life cycle of a product based on the required criteria [9,10,[12][13][14][15][16][17]. Eco-label is used as a communication tool and medium of information to consumers that a product is environmentally friendly (eco-friendly), with an eco-label affixed to a product, which indicates that a product due regard to the principles of environmental sustainability [18][19][20].…”

“…Blue Angel Label is the oldest eco-label scheme, issued by the Federal Republic of Germany with an age of more than 40 years and is still operating until now [22,23,24]. Several other eco-label schemes that exist in the world include: Environmental Choice (Canada and Sweden), Eco Mark (Japan), Green Seal (United States), Eco-Mark (India), and Eco-label (European Union) [10,14]. Currently, eco-labels are accompanied by a claim for the sustainability of a product [22].…”

Business Feasibility Analysis of Shredded Layang Fish (Decapterus) at Thanko Shredded Fish Msmes

“…This boosts the economic potential for processed fish and coincides with a rise in production (Luhur, Mulatsih, & Puspitawati, 2019) (Djunaidah, 2017). Largescale production of processed fish food must consider production volume (Setiawan, 2019), product durability (Lubis, Siregar, & Lubis, 2019), and raw materials (Wu et al, 2021) (Al, 2021). Fish is a form of perishable food (Susilo, Purwanti, Fattah, Annisa, & Shandy, 2021) (Jermsittiparsert, 2019); hence efforts must be made to diversify fish-based foods to increase their shelf life (Rostitawati, Wahyuddin, & Obie, 2019).…”