At Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk, our ultimate goal is to help create a truly sustainable food system today and for future generations. To speed up this transition as much as possible, we are keen to share our expert knowledge with others.
Explore our footprinting & LCA training program.
We offer various expert trainings, offering you a blend of theory, hands-on exercises, and case studies, providing you and your team with practical and actionable knowledge which will help you to implement footprinting best practices into your work.
We offer standard training modules which can be taken individually or in combination with other modules. Some of the modules require more prerequisite expertise than others. In these cases, we suggest combining the foundational course with a specialized course.
The trainings can be given online or on location at your offices. The intellectual property of our training materials remains ours, and therefore cannot be further shared or used outside of your organization. If the training session is online, it can be filmed and re-watched later.
The Foundations of Agri-food LCA training guides you through all the steps required to perform a Life Cycle Assessment for agricultural and food products. It begins with exploring the relation between food production and sustainability, the existing challenges, and the related environmental impacts. The concept of planetary boundaries is used as the basis to understand the multifaceted nature of many of the discussed environmental issues. Then, Life Cycle Assessment is introduced by explaining the key concepts and terminology, and the most relevant standards and methodologies for the agri-food landscape. All theoretical aspects are supported by examples and exercises throughout the session (although the full day training provides more examples and case studies, as compared to the half day training).
After this training, you will be well-oriented in the world of Life Cycle Assessment and you will be able to understand and interpret the environmental impacts of agri-food systems.
In the commitment to sustainability and environmental awareness, it is essential that organizations gain a deeper understanding the GHG emissions they emit. A way to gain insight into these GHG emissions is by quantifying the corporate footprint, better known as the Scope 1, Scope 2 and Scope 3 emissions according to the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Corporate Standard. The Corporate Footprinting for Agri-food Companies training will give you the tools you need to define your company’s GHG emissions and will guide you through the key steps within corporate footprinting. You will learn how and where to start, where to find the relevant data (both internally and externally), and how to calculate and report your emissions.
The Land Use Change (LUC) Accounting training offers an interactive session on the topic of Land Use Change and how we can adequately account for it. The training covers context, background information, and critical perspectives on the methodological choices and challenges related to LUC accounting. After a general introduction of the topic, we elaborate on the methodology that is used in our LUC Impact tool and on other relevant methodological considerations. Next, we explore some critical notes, for example on different LUC methods and proposed “solutions” to LUC. Finally, we give an explanation and comparison of alternative methods to land use change accounting, such as carbon opportunity costs. The training also includes a short demonstration of our Blonk LUC Impact tool and ample space for open discussion and questions.
*There is a €500 discount on the training when purchased in combination with our LUC Impact Tool.
The Animal Production Systems training is an interactive training that focuses on the on-farm production of animal products, which is typically the hotspot of animal-based consumer products. It analyses the production of swine, poultry, cattle and aqua products from a lifecycle perspective starting from the recognized standards used for LCAs in this domain, to the step-by-step execution of a life cycle assessment, while touching upon the expected hotspots and typical system interventions. At least basic LCA knowledge is expected from the participants, as LCA concepts will be used and discussed during the training. With the tools provided by this training, participants with knowledge of animal production systems (e.g. nutritionists, vets, among others) will be able to review, interpret, and perform life cycle assessments (if they have access to the necessary LCA modelling tools and data).
The Crop Cultivation training provides all the necessary knowledge to perform Life Cycle Assessment studies of crops, including arable crops, horticulture, and floriculture. The training includes methodological insights, practical examples, and an overview of the most relevant standards (FloriPEFCR, FreshProduce shadow PEFCR, Hortifootprint Category Rules).
First, the training builds upon basic LCA knowledge to elaborate on how to tackle the analysis of crop cultivation by looking at direct emissions modelling, agricultural data requirements, data sampling, and impact assessment methods. The content is accompanied by case studies and exercises to increase comprehension. Tools that can be used to facilitate the implementation of LCA for crop cultivation are also shown. The training concludes with a look at some of the most interesting strategies for reducing the impacts of crop cultivation.
By taking the Farm to Fork training, participants will gain a deep understanding of sustainable nutrition, including challenges in defining healthy and sustainable foods and diets. The training covers the principles behind defining healthy and sustainable diets with optimization techniques; insights into food LCA databases and data needs and challenges for processing to mouth stages of a food's life cycle; and interventions for more sustainable consumption, including ecolabelling. Equipped with this knowledge, participants will be able to critically evaluate food databases, identify data needs for defining healthy and sustainable diets, and apply life cycle thinking to improve human and planetary health through food. This training is for sustainability officers, R&D managers, quality managers at bigger SME companies in food industry, service, retail sector; senior advisors, researchers from civil society organizations and related government agencies.
Contact Jixin if you want more information on our training offerings or if you’d like to organize a training session for your organization.