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The environmental sustainability has emerged as a crucial aspect in the agri-food sector, nevertheless environmental assessments and certifications of cocoa and chocolate are still missing. Given this gap and the increasing global demand for cocoa derivatives, this study aims to evaluate the environmental impacts of an Italian dark chocolate through a holistic cradle-to-grave Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The impact categories assessed are acidification potential (AC), eutrophication potential (EU), global warming potential (GW), photochemical ozone creation potential (POC), ozone layer depletion potential (OD), abiotic depletion (AD) and cumulative energy demand (CED). The obtained results highlight the relevant contributions of upstream phase (63% for the ODP, 92% for EU and 99% for the AD) and core processes (39% for the GW and 49% for the CED) on the overall impacts. Specifically, cocoa provisioning and energy supply at the manufacturing plant emerged as environmental hotspots and have been deeper investigated through a sensitivity analysis. Obtained outcomes show the significant variability of the environmental impacts due to the agricultural phase (i.e., depending on agroecosystems and practices) and environmental benefits guaranteed by an efficient trigeneration system implemented in the manufacturing plant. The quantification of the environmental impacts of chocolate through LCA, the identification of the main hotspots along the supply chain and the sensitivity analysis performed in this study could effectively support chocolate companies in their pathway towards environmentally sustainable productions.

The recovery of precious metals through hydrometallurgical techniques is one of the most active research areas on recovery of metals from electronic scraps. In this perspective, a pilot plant was designed for the treatment of small WEEE (Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment) via hydrometallurgy. The process is based on two different leaching steps, in nitric acid and in aqua regia, followed by electrodeposition processes, to mainly recover copper, silver and gold. Two adsorption steps were also carried out to recover nickel and tin.The goal of the present study is to assess the environmental impacts associated with the designed hydrometallurgical treatment of the small WEEE through Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. The approach considered is cradle-to-gate, i.e., from the collected WEEE entering the collection centre to the secondary metals obtained from the hydrometallurgical treatment.Results obtained by SimaPro software and CML-IA method show that the nitric acid leaching contributes mostly to the impacts of the hydrometallurgical process (from 40% to 80%), followed by the adsorption steps. From an environmental perspective, the latter can still be improved at the design phase by increasing the lifetime of the sorbents

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