LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 6B: FISHIERIES, SOIL, AND EMERGY METHODS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
534
Life cycle assessment and eMergy application to the comparison
between organic and conventional productions
Elena Neri 1,* , Francesca Rossetti 1 , Benedetto Rugani 2 , Federico M. Pulselli 3 , Valentina Niccolucci 3 , Simone
Bastianoni 1 , Nadia Marchettini 3
1 Ecodynamics Group, Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Siena, via A. Moro, 2 – 53100 Siena - Italy
2 Public Research Centre Henri Tudor (CRPHT) / Resource Centre for Environmental Technologies (CRTE) - 66, rue de Luxembourg,
P.B. 144, L-4002, Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg
3 Ecodynamics Group, Dipartimento di Chimica, Università degli Studi di Siena, via della Diana, 2A – 53100 Siena, Italy
* Corresponding author. E-mail: elena.neri@unisi.it
ABSTRACT
The present study proposes the parallel application of LCA and EMergy Evaluation (EME) to compare wine and olive oil production
systems according to different agricultural management practices: conventional vs. organic. The purpose is to contribute to the research
question on whether and how organic products constitute effectively a better choice both for consumers and producers in
terms of environmental loadings. The parallel application of EME and LCA represents a strategic tool for a comprehensive interpretation
of the issue under discussion. LCA outlines that major impacts, for both wine managements, are related to the packaging phase
(average 50%), while the most detrimental phase in both olive oil productions is represented by the agricultural phase (average 60%).
In both case conventional productions show higher impact values. EME outlines much larger intensive use of resources to produce a
bottle of conventional wine and olive oil, highlighting the importance of local resources valorization and renewability of different
production managements
Keywords: LCA, eMergy, conventional agriculture, organic agriculture, olive oil, wine.
1. Introduction
Organic productions aim at providing consumers with fresh and genuine products obtained through traditional
agricultural managements, which usually avoid the use of synthetic fertilisers and rely on a wise consumption
of resources and on the respect of natural cycles and pest controls, on crop rotations and green
manure applications. However, discussions upon the different level of environmental sustainability between
organic and conventional farms are still open. Can the management of a farm, by means of organic practices,
actually guarantee its sustainability? The parallel application of two environmental accounting methodologies,
i.e. LCA and EMergy Evaluation (EME), may represent a valid approach to obtain comprehensive outcomes
and answers upon that issue, since LCA and EME have complementary features when assessing the
overall environmental impacts of the whole production chain (Rugani et al., 2009). The aim of this paper is
to apply LCA and EME to wine and olive oil from Tuscany (Italy), which are typical products of this region.
Two types of agro-industrial productive managements, i.e. organic and conventional, are compared for these
products in order to evaluate the differences in terms of environmental performance. Indeed, the proposed
approach fits arguably in the current growing interest towards the improvement of environmental performances
of agri-food products such as wine and olive oil, as recent studies demonstrate. Concerning olive oil
productions several works approach the energetic and resource-oriented question (Guzman et al., 2008;
Avraamides et al., 2008; De Gennaro et al., 2012). Otherwise Salomone et al., (2012) highlighted that, in
order to understand and properly manage local food-supply chains in a sustainable manner, more specific
chain-focused and regional-focused LCA studies in the olive oil industry are needed. Concerning wine productions,
the introduction of the life cycle thinking is becoming more and more common, as the growing
number of works shows (e.g. Notarnicola et al., 2003; Ardente et al., 2006; Petti et al., 2006; Point et al.,
2012, Rugani et al., 2009; Vázquez-Rowe, 2012).
2. Methods
2.1 LCA and eMergy
For the two farms of wine and olive oil production, the LCA was conducted from cradle to gate (where
gate is the bottling phase). The functional units were 1 L of bottled wine and 1 kg of bottled oil. LCI data
were elaborated by means of the software SimaPro 7.3 and using the Ecoinvent database as background dataset,
while the LCIA characterisation phase was determined using the CML 2 Baseline Method 2001 (Guinée
et al., 2002). In order to be consistent with the aim of the present work, only impact categories strictly connected
with the evaluation of environment impacts of the two productive processes were selected: Acidification
(AP), Eutrophication (EP), Global Warming (GWP100), and Photochemical Oxidation (POP) potentials.
The other method used for the compared analysis was eMergy, that is “...the quantity of solar energy neces-