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

PARALLEL SESSION 1A: WATER FOOTPRINT 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
(WSI) (Pfister at al., 2009). Most of the input data were primary data, obtained from the Italian company
records.
3. Results
3.1. Goals and scope of study
The goals of this water footprint study were to quantify:
1. the water footprint accounting of two alternative strawberry farming (non-organic and organic).
The strawberries are produced in one site in Bulgaria owned by the Italian company that produces
the jam. Primary data of the planting and harvesting period were collected.
2. the direct and indirect water footprint of a 330g organic strawberry Jam produced by the Italian
company. A cradle to gate perspective was adopted, considering all the processes and materials
that contribute to the production of the product. Secondary distribution, use and end of life were
excluded.
The water footprint accounting of the alternative farming is expressed in l/kg of strawberries.
The functional unit used to represent the product water footprint is 330g of organic strawberry jam sold in
Italy. Data used in the study refers to a 15 months period between 2009 and 2010: from strawberry plantation
to final product primary distribution. The Italian company owns and manages the farming site in Bulgaria
and the production and distribution sites in Italy. Table 1 reports the main ingredients contained in 1 kg of
organic strawberry jam.
Table 1. Main ingredients of the product under study
Ingredient Quantity (grams)
Organic Strawberries 600
Organic Apple pulp 380
Pectin 20
Figure 1 represents the boundary of the production system of the 330g Organic Strawberry jam under
study. The diagram shows only the major production steps included in the study.
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Figure 1. Boundary of the production system under study