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Purpose This paper describes the research that underpins the development of EATS (the Environmental Assessment Tool for School meals), a life cycle-based decision support tool for local authorities and their contractors responsible for providing catering services to schools. The purpose of this tool is to quantify the carbon footprint (CF) and water footprint (WF) of the meals served in order to identify hotspot meals and ingredients, and suggest simple, yet transformative, reduction measures. A case study is used to test the tool, comparing the impacts of 34 school meal recipes. Methods The tool utilises secondary data to calculate values of CF and WF for a school meal from cradle to plate. This includes three phases: (1) food production, (2) transport of each ingredient to a generic school kitchen in the UK, and (3) meal preparation. Considerations for waste along the supply chain are included. After testing the tool against a set of nutritionally compliant meals, a sensitivity analysis was performed to investigate the influence of the origin and seasonality of the ingredients, transport mode and cooking appliances used on the final results. Results and discussionThe results of the case study show the predominance of the production phase in the overall carbon footprint and that there is a strong tendency towards lower impacts for meat-free meals; however, this is not always the case, for instance some of the chicken-based meals present lower impacts than vegetarian meals rich in dairy ingredients. The sensitivity analysis performed on one of the meals shows that the highest value of CF is obtained when the horticultural products are out of season and produced in heated greenhouses, whilst the highest value of WF is obtained when the origin of the ingredients is unknown and the global average values of WF are used in the analysis; this defines a crucial data need if accurate analyses are to be uniformly possible. Conclusions This article focuses on the potential offered by the public food sector for a transformative reduction in the environmental impact of urban food consumption. The results presented prove that careful menu planning and procurement choices can considerably reduce the overall environmental impact of the service provided without compromising quality or variety. This research thus supports those responsible for making these decisions via a user-friendly tool based on robust scientific evidence.

Abstract:The rise in the influence of sustainability principles has resulted in an almost overwhelming number of methods for defining, measuring and assessing sustainability and liveability. For such assessments to be accurate they must have a clearly defined 'sustainability and liveability space', be designed for the context in which the measurements are to be taken, evidence a clear causal chain and make explicit interdependencies. The degree to which current methods meet these criteria is varied. This paper introduces the City Analysis Methodology (CAM), an innovative urban analysis framework for holistically measuring the performance of UK cities with regard to sustainability and liveability. It demonstrates the need for, and defines the Measuring urban sustainability and liveability performance 87 parameters for, interventions that enhance rather than compromise wellbeing and provides a model for other countries to leverage the sustainability and liveability of their cities. The paper concludes with an application of the CAM to the design of city infrastructure. Biographical notes: Joanne M. Leach has been a researcher on the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council-(EPSRC-) funded program grant Liveable Cities since May 2012, which aims to create an holistic, integrated, truly multi-disciplinary city analysis methodology, which uniquely integrates wellbeing indicators, is founded on an evidence base of trials of radical interventions in cities, and delivers realistic and radical engineering solutions. Prior to Liveable Cities, she worked as a project manager on multi-disciplinary research projects in the field of sustainable urban environments. These included VivaCity2020 and Designing Resilient Cities. Her research interests are varied, but have a common focus: sustainable cities. These include understanding and assessing urban sustainability and liveability, futures thinking and designing for future resilience, crime and fear of crime and soundscapes. She is particularly interested in how to facilitate the decision-making processes of local authorities to ensure future resilience along a path of increasing sustainability and liveability. KeywordsPeter A Braithwaite has a varied international career in the construction industry and the built environment gaining expertise in sustainability, urban regeneration, geotechnical engineering, mining and environmental services. He is a former Director at Arup and Head of Sustainability (CH2M HILL) for the London 2012 Olympic Development Agency Delivery Partner, with special responsibility for delivering energy, waste, water, materials, biodiversity and environmental impact sustainability targets. He has a particular interest in developing frameworks, key performance indicators, monitoring and assurance tools for cities and corporate business. He was conferred as Honorary Professor, School of Engineering, University of Birmingham in 2006. Susan E. Lee is a Research Fellow on the Liveable Cities Project funded by the EPSRC. She has published in a variety o...