Stephen WiedemannIntegrity Ag & Environment
Stephen Wiedemann
Doctor of Philosophy
About
43
Publications
31,873
Reads
How we measure 'reads'
A 'read' is counted each time someone views a publication summary (such as the title, abstract, and list of authors), clicks on a figure, or views or downloads the full-text. Learn more
1,384
Citations
Citations since 2017
Introduction
Skills and Expertise
Publications
Publications (43)
Wool recycling has been practiced commercially for more than 200 years. This study used
data from established, commercial processes with the aim of determining the environmental impacts of a recycled wool blend garment and the contribution of recycling to reducing impacts on the market for wool sweaters, in comparison to other emission reduction ap...
Purpose
Changes in the production of Australian cotton lint are expected to have a direct environmental impact, as well as indirect impacts related to co-product substitution and induced changes in crop production. The environmental consequences of a 50% expansion or contraction in production were compared to Australian cotton production’s current...
Purpose
Garment production and use generate substantial environmental impacts, and the care and use are key determinants of cradle-to-grave impacts. The present study investigated the potential to reduce environmental impacts by applying best practices for garment care combined with increased garment use. A wool sweater is used as an example becaus...
The FAO Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership organised a Technical Advisory Group (TAG) to develop reference guidelines on water footprinting for livestock production systems and supply chains. The mandate of the TAG was to i) provide recommendations to monitor the environmental performance of feed and livestock sup...
This report reviews 50 studies analyzing livestock water productivity carried out in various regions of the world from 1993 to 2018.
Clothing maintenance is necessary for keeping clothing and textiles functional and socially acceptable, but it has environmental consequences due to the use of energy, water and chemicals. This article discusses whether clothes made of different materials are cleaned in different ways and have different environmental impacts. It fills a knowledge g...
Increasing the use of each product, most often called longer lifespans, is an effective environmental strategy. This article discusses how garment lifespans can be described in order to be measured and compared. It answers two sub-questions: (1) what to measure (units), and (2) how to measure (methods). We introduce and define terms related to clot...
PurposeThe textiles industry is a substantial contributor to environmental impacts through the production, processing, use, and end-of-life of garments. Wool is a high value, natural, and renewable fibre that is used to produce a wide range of garments, from active leisure wear to formal wear, and represents a small segment of the global fashion in...
Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a key tool for determining environmental impacts for textiles and apparel and is the basis for the publicly available Higg Material Sustainability Index (MSI) developed by the Sustainable Apparel Coalition (SAC). This paper reviews and evaluates the Higg MSI with respect to rating of fabrics made from natural fibre ty...
Purpose
One aim of LCA-based rating tools developed by the apparel industry is to promote a change in demand for textiles by influencing consumer preferences based on the environmental footprint of textiles. Despite a growing consensus that footprints developed using attributional LCA (aLCA) are not suitable to inform decisions that will impact sup...
A study investigating the trend in environmental impacts in the production of Australian pork between 1980 to present with a prediction included for 2020 impacts. Impact categories included greenhouse gas emissions, fossil energy use, fresh water consumption and stress weighted water use.
Little is known regarding manure nutrient deposition in free range egg layer facilities. Consequently, a significant knowledge gap exists regarding how to best manage soil nutrient loading on these farms. Here, we report on soil nutrient properties across 14 Australian free range farms. Electromagnetic-induction (EM) mapping was performed at each f...
Utilisation of water, energy and land resources is under pressure globally because of increased demand for food, fibre and fuel production. Australian pork production utilises these resources both directly to grow and process pigs, and indirectly via the consumption of feed and other inputs. With increasing demand and higher costs associated with t...
Agri-food industries such as chicken meat production face increasing pressure to quantify and improve their environmental performance over time, while simultaneously increasing production to meet global demand. Using life cycle assessment, this study aimed to quantify resource use, environmental impacts and hotspots for Australian chicken meat prod...
Australia is the largest supplier of fine apparel wool in the world, produced from diverse sheep production systems. To date, broad scale analyses of the environmental credentials of Australian wool have not used detailed farm-scale data, resulting in a knowledge gap regarding the performance of this product. This study is the first multiple impact...
Greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions are important environmental impacts from manure management in the layer-hen industry. The present study aimed to quantify emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4) and ammonia (NH3) from layer-hen manure stockpiles, and assess the use of an impermeable cover as an option to mitigate emissions. Gaseous emis...
Greenhouse gas (GHG) and ammonia emissions are important environmental impacts from meat chicken houses. This study measured ammonia (NH3), nitrous oxide (N2O) and methane (CH4) in two trials from paired, commercial meat chicken houses using standard (control) and mitigation strategies. In Trial 1, emissions from houses with standard litter depth o...
Mitigation of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions is a target area for the Australian Government and the pork industry. The present study measured methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and ammonia (NH3) from a deep-litter piggery and litter stockpile over two trials in southern New South Wales, to compare emissions from housing pigs on deep litter w...
In the Australian pork industry, manure is the main source of greenhouse gases (GHG). In conventional production systems, effluent from sheds is transferred into open anaerobic ponds where the effluent is typically stored for many months, with the potential of generating large quantities of GHG. The present study measured methane (CH4), nitrous oxi...
Agricultural industries are under increasing pressure to measure and reduce greenhouse gas emissions from the supply chain. The Australian pork industry has established proactive goals to improve greenhouse-gas (GHG) performance across the industry, but while productivity indicators are benchmarked by industry, similar data have not previously been...
Grain finishing of cattle has become increasingly common in Australia over the past 30 years. However, interest in the associated environmental impacts and resource use is increasing and requires detailed analysis. In this study we conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) to investigate impacts of the grain-finishing stage for cattle in seven feedlo...
This chapter examines life cycle assessment (LCA) of wool textiles and clothing, focussing on the specific elements of the wool value chain where methodology and data significantly affect quantification of environmental impacts and resource use. Recent methodological developments, particularly for handling co-products from production on sheep farms...
Australia is one of the two largest exporting nations for beef and lamb in the world and the USA is a major export market for both products. To inform the Australian red meat industry regarding the environmental performance of exported food products, this study conducted the first multi-impact analysis of Australian red meat export supply chains in...
Purpose Methodology of co-product handling is a critical determinant of calculated resource use and environmental emissions per kilogram (kg) product but has not been examined in detail for different sheep production systems. This paper investigates alternative approaches for handling co-production of wool and live weight (LW, for meat) from dual p...
In life cycle assessment studies, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from direct land-use change have been estimated to make a significant contribution to the global warming potential of agricultural products. However, these estimates have a high uncertainty due to the complexity of data requirements and difficulty in attribution of land-use change. Th...
Resource use and environmental impacts are important factors relating to the sustainability of beef production in Australia. This study used life cycle assessment to investigate impacts from grass-finished beef production in eastern Australia to the farm gate, reporting impacts per kilogram of liveweight (LW) produced. Mean fossil fuel energy deman...
This study conducted a life cycle assessment (LCA) investigating energy, land occupation, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, fresh water consumption and stress-weighted water use from production of export lamb in the major production regions of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. The study used data from regional datasets and case study far...
The sheep industry has played an important role in Australia's development and economy over the 220 years since European settlement and remains an important land use in Australia, occupying an estimated 85million ha of continental land mass. Historically, deforestation was carried out in many sheep-rearing regions to promote pasture growth but this...
Over the past three decades major changes have occurred in Australia's beef industry, affecting productivity and potentially the amount of resources used and environmental impacts from production. Using a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach with a ‘cradle-to-farm gate’ boundary the changes in greenhouse gas (GHG) emission intensity and key resourc...
• Water scarcity, a function of supply and demand, is a regional issue with global repercussions, given that 1) the increasing human population and demand for animal products will increase water demand and influence international trade in agricultural products and that 2) global climate change is altering rainfall patterns worldwide. • Water can be...
In Australia, agriculture is responsible for ~17% of total greenhouse gas emissions with ruminants being the largest single source. However, agriculture is likely to be shielded from the full impact of any future price on carbon. In this review, strategies for reducing ruminant methane output are considered in relation to rumen ecology and biochemi...
Purpose
This paper describes part of the first detailed environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) of Australian red meat (beef and sheep meat) production. The study was intended to assist the methodological development of life cycle impact assessment by examining the feasibility of new indicators for natural resource management (NRM) issues relevan...
Background and theoryLife cycle assessment (LCA) and life cycle inventory (LCI) practice needs to engage with the debate on water use in agriculture
and industry. In the case of the red meat sector, some of the methodologies proposed or in use cannot easily inform the debate
because either the results are not denominated in units that are meaningfu...
Greenhouse gas emissions from beef production are a significant part of Australia's total contribution to climate change. For the first time an environmental life cycle assessment (LCA) hybridizing detailed on-site process modeling and input-output analysis is used to describe Australian red meat production. In this paper we report the carbon footp...
Water use is perhaps the primary resource allocation issue facing Australia. With the proliferation of ap-proaches to estimating ‗water use' for agricultural products and confusion over the meaning of these data, Australian agricultural industries have sought a robust, sound method that can be used to develop meaningful results at the product level...
Australia's primary industries are under increasing environmental, social and economic pressure to measure and reduce resource use and environmental impacts. For the pork industry, major resource and environ-mental issues are related to water use, energy use (primary energy – PE) and greenhouse gas emissions (measured as global warming potential –...
Drinking water is vital for the health, welfare and productivity of lot-fed beef cattle, and the main component of feedlot water usage. The objectives of this study were to gain a better understanding of drinking water consumption patterns and to evaluate factors affecting consumption. This study was conducted at a medium sized cattle feedlot locat...
Whilst lot feeders usually have good records of total annual energy usage, little data exists on actual usage levels for the individual components of the operation, including water supply, feed management, waste management, cattle washing, administration and repairs and maintenance. This information is invaluable for feedlots in understanding the d...
Projects
Projects (2)
The objective of this project was to evaluate the environmental impacts of Australian cotton lint under a change in 50% expansion or reduction of production. The consequential life cycle assessment (cLCA) approach was applied to model the market effect of the global cotton fiber demand on Australian cotton production and the impacts of changes in the regional crop transformation.
This project is funded by Cotton Research and Development Corporate (CRDC), Australia to Integrity Ag & Environment.
Assessing the environmental impacts of wool garments supply chain and compared with other natural and synthetics fibres garments.
