Environmental management of confectionery products: Life cycle impacts and improvement strategies

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis paper presents the first environmental life cycle analysis for a range of different confectionery products. A proposed Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach and multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) was developed to characterise and identify the environmental profiles and hotspots for five different confectionery products; milk chocolate, dark chocolate, sugar, milk chocolate biscuit and milk-based products. The environmental impact categories are based on Nestle's EcodEX LCA tool which includes Global Warming Potential (GWP), Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP), ecosystems quality, and two new indicators previously not considered such as land use and water depletion. Overall, it was found that sugar confectionery had the lowest aggregated environmental impact compared to dark chocolate confectionery which had the highest, primarily due to ingredients. As such, nine key ingredients were identified across the five confectionery products which are recommended for confectionery manufacturers to prioritise e.g. sugar, glucose, starch, milk powder, cocoa butter, cocoa liquor, milk liquid, wheat flour and palm oil. Furthermore, the general environmental hotspots were found to occur at the following life cycle stages: raw materials, factory, and packaging. An analysis of five improvement strategies (e.g. alternative raw materials, packaging materials, renewable energy, product reformulations, and zero waste to landfill) showed both positive and negative environmental impact reduction is possible from cradle-to-grave, especially renewable energy. Surprisingly, the role of product reformulations was found to achieve moderate-to-low environmental reductions with waste reductions having low impacts. The majority of reductions was found to be achieved by focusing on sourcing raw materials with lower environmental impacts, product reformulations, and reducing waste generating an aggregated environmental reduction of 46%. Overall, this research provides many insights of the environmental impacts for a range of different confectionery products, especially how actors across the confectionery supply chain can improve the environmental sustainability performance. It is expected the findings from this research will serve as a base for future improvements, research and policies for confectionery manufacturers, supply chain actors, policy makers, and research institutes towards an environmentally sustainable confectionery industry.

Environmental analysis along the supply chain of dark, milk and white chocolate: a life cycle comparison

“…Certainly, the careful choice of products with lower environmental impacts, resulting from a better management of their cultivation and processing, could improve system performances. An alternative is the substitution of some ingredients; for instance, the use of soy milk, instead of cow milk, could reduce the impacts up to 70-90% (Miah et al 2018). However, this solution is not always possible because the replacement changes the characteristics of the final product, such as taste, nutrition values and physical appearance.…”

“…Others also consider the manufacturing (Büsser and Jungbluth 2009;Pérez Neira 2016), or the transport and the transformation neglecting the cultivation step (Vesce et al 2016). Only packaging material can be also studied specifically (Allione et al 2011), whereas few works take into account the whole life cycle (Miah et al 2018;Recanati et al 2018;Konstantas et al 2018). Still, in all these cases, they focus on dark chocolate or chocolate derivatives, such as chocolate biscuits and wafers or moulded chocolate.…”

Novel macroalgae (seaweed) biorefinery systems for integrated chemical, protein, salt, nutrient and mineral extractions and environmental protection by green synthesis and life cycle sustainability assessments

“…The system boundary includes the direct, indirect and embedded inputs and outputs. For each biorefinery unit operation inventory given in Table 2 are the key ones control the decision making realised in the food and healthcare sector 94,95 .…”

Investigation of the Influence of Glycerin on Rheological Characteristics of Marzipan Pastes With Dry Mineralized Whey

“…Modern decorative semi-products for confectionary products are presented by the wide assortment of diverse creams, pomades, glaze masses, plastic masses of chocolate, marzipan, sugar, painting masses, powders, molten decoration of caramel, chocolate and so on [1][2][3]. The special place among decorative semi-products is occupied by marzipan [4,5].…”