Partner description

The Research Institute of Organic Agriculture (FiBL) Austria is an independent non-profit organization with two locations and the headquarters in Vienna. The main areas of research and consultancy work include plant production, animal husbandry and sustainable food systems. A core competency of FiBL Austria is sustainability assessment of food supply chains and agricultural systems by analysing aspects of sustainability on product, field, farm/enterprise or sector level. FiBL Austria is using a wide range of methods, such as Life Cycle Assessments (LCA), Carbon Footprint, Water Footprint, Farm- and product-level Biodiversity Assessment, SMART (Sustainability Monitoring and Assessment Routine) and socio-economic calculations from the perspective of sustainability.

Website: http://www.fibl.org

 Role in the project

FiBL Austria will coordinate WP7 and will be the task leader of 7.2 which objective is to develop and operationalise a framework for evaluating biophysical, economic and social micro- and nanoplastic impacts on Ecosystem Services and sustainability at field, farm and society level. The coordination of the report-recommendations for policymakers in EU agriculture (task 7.4) will be done by FiBL Austria too. Furthermore FiBL Austria will contribute to the harmonisation of monitoring and methodologies (WP2), the assessment of the use of plastics across Europe (WP3) and dissemination and exploitation (WP8).

 Persons involved

Mag. Ildikó Heim MBA is a project manager with extensive experience in sustainability. Her interests relate to food supply chain assessments. She has utilised research methods such as literature reviews, case studies, telephone interviews, focus groups and workshops. She is also experienced in organising scientific conferences, meetings and events. She was involved in other EU projects, such as Diversifood, Diverimpacts, OK Net Arable.

DI Stefan Schweiger is a FiBL Researcher with longstanding experience in Life Cycle Assessment, comprehensive Sustainability Assessment along agricultural value chains and Renewable Energy Technologies. He is experienced in the areas of environmental and project management and is engaged in research for official as well as private clients.