Are consumers aware of products’ environmental impacts? Different results between life cycle assessment data and consumers’ opinions: the case study of organic Parmigiano Reggiano and its packaging

Abstract

Companies are paying attention to the reduction of their products’ environmental impact and consumer’s opinion is fundamental to understand which are the market strategies to be undertaken. Consumers are interested in environmental issue, but do they buy products taking scientific data into account? For example, according to literature, consumers believe that the abolition of plastic packaging is the solution to marine litter caused by plastic waste, but researchers and scientists do not agree. In collaboration with an Italian dairy factory, this study carried out a survey to understand what is the eco-friendliest packaging materials according to consumers, taking as a reference the Parmigiano Reggiano. Their opinions were then compared to the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) results obtained considering the whole cheese life cycle and its packaging. The analysis highlights a big gap between consumers’ thoughts and scientific data and suggests solutions to make citizens aware of real environmental impacts.

Bovine beta casein polymorphism and environmental sustainability of cheese production: The case of Grana Padano PDO and mozzarella cheese

“…3). This result is consistent with the conclusions of other studies on Grana Padano PDO cheese (Bava et al, 2018), mozzarella cheese (Palmieri et al, 2017) and on other cheeses (Borghesi et al, 2022;Dalla Riva et al, 2018;van Middelaar et al, 2011).…”

“…Probably, that was the main driver of this difference detected among the studies, since cheese yield is almost equal between Grana Padano PDO and Parmigiano Reggiano PDO. The water footprint of 1 kg of cheese, indeed, was also much higher than those reported by Borghesi et al (2022), that is equal to 3.39 m 3 . Environmental impact of mozzarella cheese was comparable to the values reported by Dalla Riva et al (2017), for climate change, terrestrial acidification, marine eutrophication and human toxicity.…”

“…Considering DM allocation, results obtained for climate change of Grana Padano PDO was almost the double than those reported by Borghesi et al (2022) on Parmigiano Reggiano PDO cheese (6.74 kg CO2 eq/kg packaged cheese). However, despite the production system considered by Borghesi et al (2022) was organic, the impact of raw milk involved in the cheese production was equal to 0.98 kg CO 2 eq/kg FPCM, that is much lower than the impact of the milk considered in the present study (1.71 kg CO 2 eq/kg FPCM, on average for the three β-casein genetic variants). Probably, that was the main driver of this difference detected among the studies, since cheese yield is almost equal between Grana Padano PDO and Parmigiano Reggiano PDO.…”

Baverage Container Deposit Return System in Slovakia: Insights after One Year of Its Introduction

“…The use of packaging affects all the spheres of the circulation and consumption of food products and the use of other products. In the case of food, throughout this chain, the food production, packaging production, transport, and storage of packaged food, its sale in the retail chain, and its consumption by the consumer can be distinguished, and in each of these steps the packaging requirements may be either the same or different (Borghesi et al, 2022;Ellsworth-Krebs et al, 2022;Macena et al, 2021). For a correct choice of packaging system, it is important to specify the packaging requirements from the consumer to the production of the food and to compare them also from an economic point of view.…”