Life cycle assessment and water footprint scarcity of yogurt

Abstract

The dairy sector presents various environmental impacts and a transition towards more ecological processes is required. This might be achieved through life cycle assessment, a tool used to evaluate the environmental impacts of a product throughout its life cycle. This paper aims to assess the environmental performance from cradle-to-grave of a dairy product, 1 kg of yogurt. To model the life cycle inventory and life cycle impact assessment phases, the SimaPro software and the IMPACT 2002 + method are used, respectively. Water scarcity is assessed using the Available WAter REmaining (AWARE) consensus methodology. The results show that the milk production accounts for the highest impacts due to animal crops, whether imported or cultivated. The latter crops require fertilizers, which contribute by 72.3% to global warming, 72.5% to terrestrial acidification/nutrification, and 64.4% to aquatic eutrophication. Imported crops contribute to all impact categories except for non-carcinogens and terrestrial/aquatic ecotoxicity, for which a positive contribution on the environment is observed due to the use of organic fertilizers for the crops production. Environmental impacts are also imposed on the other categories due to crops production and fuel consumption. It is shown that the use of organic fertilizers and reduction of the distance of importation could be two potential ways to decrease the environmental load for some impact categories. For the water scarcity, the water consumed to produce 1 kg of yogurt is 285 L and the feed production stage contributes to 97.71% of the total water scarcity (2.00E + 01 m3 world eq).