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

GROUP 5, SESSION B: FOOD PRODUCTS 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
145. Tracking environmental impact of food production chain: a case
study on fresh carrot chain in Italy
Simona Bosco 1,* , Giorgio Ragaglini 1 , Giuseppe Garcea 2 , Roberta De Natale 3 , Enrico Bonari 1
1 Institute of Life Sciences, Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy, 2 CCPB Srl, Bologna, Italy, 3 Auchan
SpA, Rozzano Milanofiori, Italy, Corresponding author. E-mail: s.bosco@sssup.it
It is recognised that food product supply chains contribute to the environmental impact of goods production
and consumption. In the last years, an increasing number of food chain partners and public authorities have
promoted many initiatives to provide information about the environmental performance of food products
(Peacock et al., 2011), with an initial interest focused only on the carbon footprint analysis (Hillier et al.,
2009; BSI 2011). Adoption of differences approaches, methodologies and objectives could confuse consumers
and stakeholders, while scientifically defensible information concerning food production and food product
and production systems are required by policymaker and producers (Schau and Fet 2008).
Here we proposed a new method specific for food products and production chains eco-labelling based on
LCI built on modular phases integrated within questionnaires. The food chain system boundary was defined
so as to include four main phase: agricultural phase, processing and packaging, delivery to platform and to
retail store. Consumer phase was not included, except for waste management. The LCI considered all the
inputs, both energy and material, involved in the production process, and the outputs for each phase of the
food chain, including all transports until the supermarket. Special attention was devoted to the agricultural
phase, for all field operations data were tracked in a field trial notebook and all the direct field emissions
were included. This method was applied to a complex food product chain of a large-scale retail trade company.
The examined production was fresh carrot within a real case study in Italy, using an approach similar
to that of food traceability. 1 kg fresh carrot packed in a plastic tray was chosen as functional unit (FU), and
the production chain was organised in farm production, processing and packaging in Abruzzo Region, delivery
to distribution platform in Lombardy Region and to one single retail store located in the same region
(Fig. 1). The data collection was referred to 2009; primary data were collected by questionnaires, filled out
by farmers or technicians responsible of each phase. Secondary data were from GaBi embedded database and
literature (GaBi, 2012). CML 2001 method was used for impact assessment for seven main impact categories
(IC): Global Warming (GWP), Acidification (AP), Eutrophication (EP), Freshwater Aquatic Ecotoxicity
(FAETP), Terrestric Ecotoxicity (TETP), Photochem. Ozone Creation (POCP), Human Toxicity (HTP).
Results presented in Fig. 2 show that packaging and storing phases were responsible of the largest impact
level in each considered ICs, mainly due to the estimated electricity consumption for refrigeration. It is important
to notice that also the distribution at platform, rarely included in the literature, could significantly
affect the results in some IC, 33% in FAETP and 27.5% in HTP. On the contrary, the cultivation phase
showed low impact levels in average, with exception for EP, where it was responsible for the 39% of the
estimated impact. The proposed approach was able to describe and analyse the impact of a real food production
chain. The questionnaires allowed building a simple and clear method for a detailed data collection. This
approach helped to develop a standardised system boundary for food products and subsequently to carry out
robust and easily comparable LCA analyses.
References
BSI, 2011 PAS 2050:2011 - Specification for the assessment of the life cycle greenhouse gas emissions of
goods and services. BSI British Standards, London.
GaBi, 2012. GaBi software. http://gabi-software.com
Hillier, J., Hawes, C., Squire, G., Hilton, A., Wale, S., Smith, P., 2009. The carbon footprints of food crop
production. Int J Agric Sustain, 7(2), 107-118.
Peacock, N., Camillis, C., Pennington, D., Aichinger, H., Parenti, A., Rennaud, J.-P., et al., 2011. Towards a
harmonised framework methodology for the environmental assessment of food and drink products. Int J
Life Cycle Ass, 16(3), 189-197.
Schau, E. M., Fet, A. M. 2008. LCA Studies of Food Products as Background for Environmental Product
Declarations Int J Life Cycle Ass, 13, 255-264.
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