After a long wait and hard work and dedication by our data and software team, an update of our LCA database Agri-footprint is now available.

After 26 years, Hans Blonk is stepping down as the founder and director of Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk. What began in 1999 as a personal mission to make sustainability measurable has, under his vision and leadership, grown into an internationally recognized company at the forefront of sustainability in the agri-food sector.

Discover how FastCrop™ Footprint helps Rabobank streamline CO₂ footprint calculations, collect primary data for growers, and offer expert advice to reduce emissions effectively for the horticulture sector.

Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk launches a pioneering initiative: developing a U.S.-specific footprint database designed to empower food system stakeholders in their transition toward sustainability. 

Allocation plays a vital role in LCA CO₂ footprint calculations. Read how allocation keys distribute environmental impacts in Dutch agro sectors like dairy, veal, and pork. These insights are part of PPS Klimaatperspectief (Climate Perspective Dutch Agro Production) study.

In this  insightful Q&A , learn how Agri-footprint FLAG helped Terrascope to unlock a new offering for their land-intensive clients. 

We are excited to announce our geography expansion with our US office opening. Our colleagues Janjoris, Alessandra and Marty will be expanding our business in North America and expand the team with more environmental footprinting experts. 

Join the celebration of our US office opening on September 30th,2024!

For Seafish, UK's public body supporting the UK seafood sector, we developed a sector Carbon Footprint Tool. The tool enables UK seafood businesses (wildcapture and aquaculture to calculate product carbon footprints and gain insights to supply chain improvements. 

To accelerate sustainability in the Dutch horticultural sector, Rabobank aims to support horticultural entrepreneurs in getting insights into their CO₂ footprint. We support Rabobank with a digital footprint solution, encompassing primary data collection, CO₂-footprint calculations, and an expert helpdesk. 

Since March 2023 Blonk is part of Mérieux NutriSciences group to strengthen our global position in environmental footprinting. This integration also means a new brand name and visual identity, symbolizing the beginning of new chapter. Blonk is now Mérieux NutriSciences | Blonk. New brand name, same dedication and expert team! 

Blonk supported WWF Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with diet modelling techniques and environmental data to develop win-win eating patterns. Sustainable diets that meet national nutritional requirements and reduce environmental footprints of diets for adults in Czechia, Slovakia, and Hungary in 2030, while respecting cultural dietary habits. 

Blonk’s LUC Impact Dataset provides Land Use Change (LUC) Greenhouse Gas emissions for 9,000+ crop and country combinations. Our updated 2024 version now includes the ‘Crop System Efficiency Index’, which considers multiple cropping scenarios, and managed grassland as a land use category and additional crop type. 

An overview of the publicly available LCA and footprint studies for Oatly.  Through critically reviewed LCA studies, we have compared the environmental footprint of various Oatly products with their cow’s dairy counterparts.

Implementing a consistent footprint monitoring strategy can be challenging, because of complex and largescale primary data collection. Therefore, we have created specific Environmental Footprinting Modules. For Albert Heijn we utilize several Environmental Footprinting Modules and support them with carbon footprint calculations of fruit and vegetable products.

Multiple cropping is a practice, where a plot of land is subsequently planted with varying crops and harvested multiple times in a year. In the Land Use Change (LUC) methodology this has not been considered yet, leading to inaccurate LUC emission calculations. Therefore, we’ve investigated the opportunities to include multiple cropping and make more fair calculations, by applying the ‘Crop System Efficiency Index’. 

The global food system is an important contributor to the global environmental crises through resource-intensive practices, contributing to habitat destruction and biodiversity loss. Addressing the urgent need for quantifying biodiversity loss in Life Cycle Assessment, Blonk and PBL connect a biodiversity metric to LCA. 

The KringloopWijzer is a software application used by dairy farmers to gain insight into the environmental performance of their businesses. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of understanding about the inclusion of Blonk data. In article (in Dutch), we explain the situation from our point of view.

We participated in the SWEET project, an EU Horizon 2020 initiative, co-chairing Work Package 5 with the University of Surrey to assess the sustainability implications of sweeteners and sweetness enhancers. Our work included Life Cycle Sustainability Assessments (LCSA) (attributional and consequential and social) and dataset development, with the resulting environmental datasets now publicly available.

The government's greenhouse gas reporting for agriculture overlooks sector-wide emission reduction efforts by focusing only on national emissions without considering cross-sector effects. As a knowledge partner in the PPP Climate Perspective on Dutch Agri-production, Blonk contributed to a visualization matrix that reveals these hidden impacts.

Certification schemes for LUC-free or deforestation free products can help to promote sustainable sourcing practices. However, within LUC accounting guidance, there is currently no international guidance. Recognizing this gap, our LUC expert team has drafted guidelines for LUC-free certifications to set internal standards for our team. 

We are delighted to introduce our new LUC Impact Tool to you. This fully web-based tool will support you to automate your Land Use Change calculations, when little primary data is available, and deepen your knowledge and understanding of Land Use Change. The tool includes some innovative and exclusive features, such as the Carbon Opportunity Cost functionality. 

Following the approach of the 2016 study WWF-UK commissioned Blonk in 2021-2022 again to model the Livewell diet and investigate how diet shift can enable a nature positive net-zero transition in the UK. The findings show that with a dietary change it is possible not to exceed the planetary boundary for GHG emission, whilst meeting the nutritional needs, being cultural acceptable and without increasing the price of the diet

Our data experts are always looking for ways to enrich Blonk's Agri-footprint database and keep it valuable for its users. Therefore, we are proud to announce a new version of Agri-footprint which complies with the Science Based Target initiative (SBTi) Forest Land and Agriculture Guidance (FLAG). Agri-footprint FLAG will help the increasingly large group of organizations which set FLAG targets in analyzing their Greenhouse Gas (GHG) inventory.

The first date took place at a restaurant. Now the honeymoon is in full swing. New doors have opened since Mérieux NutriSciences proposed to Dutch company Blonk, and Blonk said a resounding yes. This acquisition promises a significant difference in food safety and sustainability. Jeroen Sleenhof and Hans Blonk are happy to tell you more.