Environmental Impact and Carbon Footprint Assessment of Taiwanese Agricultural Products: A Case Study on Taiwanese Dongshan Tea

Abstract

Climate change is an important global environmental threat. Agriculture aggravates climate change by increasing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and in response, climate change reduces agricultural productivity. Consequently, the modern agricultural development mode has progressively transformed into a kind of sustainable development mode. This study aimed to determine the environmental impact and carbon footprint of Dongshan tea from Yilan County. Environmental impact was assessed with use of SimaPro version 8.0.2 and IMPACT2002+. Results showed that climate change has the largest impact upon it in general, followed by human health, natural resources, and ecosystem quality. Furthermore, with use of the IPCC 2007 100a method for carbon footprint of products (CFP), conventional tea was found to have a CFP of 7.035 kgCO2-e, and its main contributors are the raw material (35.15%) and consumer use (45.58%) phases. From this case study, we found that the hotspots of the life cycle of environmental impact of Taiwanese tea mainly come from fertilizer input during the raw material phase, electricity use during manufacturing, and electricity use during water boiling in the consumer use phase (which contributes the largest impact). We propose the ways for consumers to use of highly efficient boiling water facilities and heating preservation, and the government must market the use of organic fertilizers in the national policy subsidies, and farmers have to prudent use of fertilizers and promote the use of local raw fertilizers, and engagement in direct sales for reducing the environmental impacts and costs of agricultural products and thus advancing sustainable agriculture development.

Changes of some bioactive and physicochemical properties during the black tea processing

“…In 2016, Turkey ranked the first most tea consuming country in the world followed by Ireland and United Kingdom (in kilograms) (Anonymous, 2016). The cultivation and production of tea is effectuated in more than 40 countries around the world with countries like Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, Turkey, India, China, and Sri Lanka (Alkan et al, 2009;Hu et al, 2019;Wu & Wei, 2009) leading the way as the top producers. In our country (Turkey), tea is generally grown in the Eastern Black Sea region starting from the Georgia border extending to the Western Black Sea Region in the Fatsa district.…”

Sustainable consumption and production: Modelling product carbon footprint of beverage merchandise using a supply chain input‐process‐output approach

“…Most of the recent research on the carbon footprint of food and beverage (F&B) products has focused on dairy products (Flysjö et al, 2012; Werner et al, 2014), wine and beer (Cimini & Moresi, 2018; Pattara et al, 2012; Rugani et al, 2013), tea and coffee (De Marco et al, 2018; Hu et al, 2019) and meat (Dyer et al, 2014; Koistinen et al, 2013). Despite the high volume of carbonated drink production, little evaluation and analysis have been carried out on the mapping and mitigation of the cradle‐to‐grave carbon footprint of carbonated drink products.…”

“…Instead of providing a framework and processes, it provides more detailed guidance than the ISO standards in terms of calculating the carbon footprint for accounting and reporting. Recently, an increasing number of studies of PCF have been based on PAS 2050 which includes tea (Hu et al, 2019), coffee (Hassard et al, 2014), milk (Pirlo, 2012) and particleboard (García & Freire, 2014). In addition to investigating the carbon footprint of a whole supply chain, some researchers have been focused on specific stages of the supply chain, such as packaging selection and disposal (Pasqualino et al, 2011) and distribution (Cholette & Venkat, 2009).…”

Modeling and Simulation of Carbon Emission-Related Issues

“…Besides, rice production constituted 80% of the regional carbon footprint in a crop's life cycle. Hu et al [15] evaluated the environmental impact and carbon footprint of Dongshan tea from Yilan County in Taiwan. The results indicate that climate change has the largest impact upon it, followed by human health, natural resources, and ecosystem quality.…”