Life cycle assessment of cheese and whey production in the USA

Abstract

Purpose A life cycle assessment was conducted to determine a baseline for environmental impacts of cheddar and mozzarella cheese consumption. Product loss/waste, as well as consumer transport and storage, is included. The study scope was from cradle-to-grave with particular emphasis on unit operations under the control of typical cheese-processing plants. Methods SimaPro© 7.3 (PRé Consultants, The Netherlands, 2013) was used as the primary modeling software. The ecoinvent life cycle inventory database was used for background unit processes (Frischknecht and Rebitzer, J Cleaner Prod 13(13-14): [1337][1338][1339][1340][1341][1342][1343] 2005), modified to incorporate US electricity (EarthShift 2012). Operational data was collected from 17 cheese-manufacturing plants representing 24 % of mozzarella production and 38 % of cheddar production in the USA. Incoming raw milk, cream, or dry milk solids were allocated to coproducts by mass of milk solids. Plant-level engineering assessments of allocation fractions were adopted for major inputs such as electricity, natural gas, and chemicals. Revenue-based allocation was applied for the remaining in-plant processes. Results and discussion Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are of significant interest. For cheddar, as sold at retail (63.2 % milk solids), the carbon footprint using the IPCC 2007 factors is 8.60 kg CO 2 e/kg cheese consumed with a 95 % confidence interval (CI) of 5.86-12.2 kg CO 2 e/kg. For mozzarella, as sold at retail (51.4 % milk solids), the carbon footprint is 7.28 kg CO 2 e/kg mozzarella consumed, with a 95 % CI of 5.13-9.89 kg CO 2 e/kg. Normalization of the results based on the IMPACT 2002+ life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) framework suggests that nutrient emissions from both the farm and manufacturing facility wastewater treatment represent the most significant relative impacts across multiple environmental midpoint indicators. Raw milk is the major contributor to most impact categories; thus, efforts to reduce milk/cheese loss across the supply chain are important. Conclusions On-farm mitigation efforts around enteric methane, manure management, phosphorus and nitrogen runoff, and pesticides used on crops and livestock can also significantly reduce impacts. Water-related impacts such as depletion and eutrophication can be considered resource management issues-specifically of water quantity and nutrients. Thus, all opportunities for water conservation should be evaluated, and cheese manufacturers, while not having direct control over crop irrigation, the largest water consumption activity, can investigate the water use efficiency of the milk they procure. The regionalized normalization, based on annual US per capita cheese consumption, showed that eutrophication represents the largest relative impact driven by phosphorus runoff from agricultural fields and emissions associated with whey-processing wastewater. Therefore, incorporating best practices around phosphorous and nitrogen management could yield improvements.

Strategies and Tools for Eco-Efficient Local Food Supply Scenarios

“…The aims of these analyses could be the comparison between the overall impacts of different food chains, as well as the comparison between single phases. Different researches have been investigated regarding the method used to verify the sustainability of the food system [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] and, in particular, about the school food systems [18][19][20].…”

“…Moreover, the LCA method has also been used in literature to quantify the flows of mass and energy [8], to suggest optimal scenario [6], and to compare different chains [11]: all of these kinds of analysis have been carried out in this research, using the same approach. In addition, the SimaPro tool (the leading LCA tool) is often used to quantify the environmental impacts in the food chains, as shown in [6,10,12,13]. As will be explained in the next section, SimaPro allows measuring the environmental impacts of different products or services across all life cycle stages.…”

Assessing environmental impacts using a comparative LCA of industrial and artisanal production processes: "Minas Cheese" case

“…Another objective of LCA is to provide a basis for assessing the potential improvements in the environmental performance of a product system. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a technique for assessing the potential environmental impacts associated with a product, process, or service throughout its lifetime (Kim et al, 2013;Siracusa et al, 2014). Chehebe (1998) highlights that life cycle assessment is a technique that allows a detailed evaluation of the environmental aspects and potential impacts associated with a product life cycle, ranging from the extraction and processing of the basic raw materials that enter the production to the final 14040 (International Organization for Standardization, 2006a) was kept as a model document; however, all required items were transferred to the new standard (Finkbeiner et al, 2006).…”

“…These standards provide an internationally accepted method of conducting LCA, These standards provide an internationally accepted LCA methodology adaptable to a variety of situations with different characteristics and levels of complexity. Therefore, it is possible to adapt the LCA approach to specific needs of each research (Kim et al, 2013).…”

“…Considering the value of Minas cheese as a local culture identifier, its high production volume and its growing consumption, a comparative study on the environmental impacts of the artisanal and industrial production cycles is justified. In addition to this, consumers are increasingly aware of the sustainable characteristics of the products they purchase (Kim et al, 2013).…”