Environmental and social life cycle assessment of growing media for urban rooftop farming

Abstract

Purpose New environmental strategies are emerging for cities to become more self-sufficient, such as hydroponic crop production. The implementation of such systems requires materials that usually originate in countries with low labour costs and other legal regulations. To what extent could these strategies be shifting problems across the globe? To answer this question, we performed a comprehensive environmental and social assessment of the various extended soilless systems used to grow vegetables on urban roofs. Methods Three different growing media constituents were chosen for this study: perlite, peat and coir; which are produced in three countries, Turkey, Germany and the Philippines, respectively, and are imported to Spain. By using a life cycle assessment, we evaluated the environmental performances of the production and transport of these growing media. Additionally, we performed a social life cycle assessment at different levels. First, we used the Social Hotspots Database to analyse the constituents in aggregated sectors. Second, we performed a social assessment at the country and sector levels, and finally, we evaluated primary company data for the social assessment of the constituents through questionnaires given to businesses. Results and discussion The coir-based growing medium exerted the lowest environmental burden in 5 out of 8 impact categories because it is a by-product from coconut trees. In contrast, perlite obtained the highest environmental impacts, with impacts 44 to 99.9% higher than those of peat and coir, except in the land use. Perlite is a material extracted from open-pit mines that requires high energy consumption and a long road trip. Regarding the social assessment, peat demonstrated the best performance on all the social assessment levels. In contrast, coir showed the worst scores in the Social Hotspots Database and for the impact categories of community infrastructure and human rights, whereas perlite displayed the lowest performance in health and safety. Nevertheless, coir and perlite evidenced much better scores than peat in the impact subcategory of the contribution to economic development. Conclusions This study contributes to a first comparison of three imported growing media constituents for urban rooftop farming from environmental and social perspectives to choose the most suitable option. Peat appears to be the best alternative from a social perspective. However, from an environmental standpoint, peat represents a growing medium whose availability is aiming to disappear in Germany to preserve peatlands. Therefore, we identify a new market niche for the development of local growing media for future rooftop farming in cities.

Biodisinfection as a Profitable Fertilization Method for Horticultural Crops in the Framework of the Circular Economy

“…Production costs have increased while the price at origin of fruits and vegetables has remained constant. In addition, there has been competition with developing countries that produce their goods at lower costs mainly because they spend less on labor [2,4].…”

Life cycle assessment of indoor vertical farms

“…For IVFs, the choice of substrate can also have a significant influence on the environmental performance of an IVF. Previous research has shown that substrates such as perlite and peat may have large environmental impacts, while lower environmental impacts are found for by-products such as coir (Martin et al, , 2022Quantis, 2012;Toboso-Chavero et al, 2021;Vinci and Rapa, 2019). The use of peat also continues to be controversial (Chapman et al, 2003;Hojlund, 2008;Salomaa et al, 2018).…”

Comprehensive Performance of Green Infrastructure through a Life-Cycle Perspective: A Review

“…Metropolises prioritized ecological environment benefits, MSCs emphasized social and private economic benefits, and FMCs placed a greater emphasis on private economic benefits [49]. Further research by Toboso-Chavero et al [50] evaluated various growing media (perlite, peat, and coir) for urban rooftop farming using the social LCA method. The research concluded that peat emerged as the most socially amenable growing medium, showcasing superior indicators in impact categories such as community infrastructure, human rights, and labor rights and decent work when juxtaposed with other alternatives [50].…”

“…Literature analysis revealed that of the 260 studies on GRs, only 3 [48,50,69] have addressed the social performance of GRs, with just 1 [50] examining social benefits from a life cycle perspective. This highlights the need for the further exploration of S-LCA in GI.…”