If we eat a food product and consider the perparation + cooking phase to be the Production stage and the eating phase to be the Use stage, and the generated food waste from these stages go to EoL stage (food residue left on the plate in the Use stage in a restaurant without transport!), can I skip the Use stage for the whole LCA? Here we consume the food itself and I take the food waste directly to the End-of-Life stage. There is basically no environmental load in the Use stage, in my opinion. Unless we look at consumption as energy consumption...Thank you very much.
A very interesting question! Generally, the selected system boundaries should reflect goal and scope of your study. As far as I understand at the moment, you are setting the focus solely on the technosphere. If you want to be precise, the use-stage also includes the chemical conversion of food during the metabolism and the teatment of all resulting waste streams (e.g. sewage) at the end-of-life.
Without knowing your goal and scope definition in detail, I consider it valid to argue for either perspective. In any case, I would suggest to transparently communicate what system boundaries you chose and comprehensivly explain what led to that decision. Happy to discuss this further.
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