Environmental impacts of milk powder and butter manufactured in the Republic of Ireland

Abstract

The abolition of the milk quota system that was in place in Europe was abolished in 2015, which instigated an immediate increase in milk production in many European countries. This increase will aid in addressing the world's ever growing demand for food, but will incur increased stresses on the environmental impact and sustainability of the dairy industry. In this study, an environmental life cycle assessment was performed in order to estimate the environmental impacts associated with the manufacture of milk powder and butter in the Republic of Ireland. A farm gate to processing factory gate analysis, which includes raw milk transportation, processing into each product and packaging, is assessed in this study. Operational data was obtained from 5 dairy processing factories that produce milk powder (4 of which also produce butter). Results for each environmental impact category are presented per kilogram of product. Energy consumption (raw milk transportation and on-site electrical and thermal energy usage) contributes, on average, 89% and 78% of the total global warming potential, for milk powder and butter respectively, for the life cycle stages assessed. Similarly, energy consumption contributes, on average, 86% and 96% of the total terrestrial acidification potential for milk powder and butter respectively, for these life cycle stages. Emissions associated with wastewater treatment contribute approximately 10% and 40% to the total freshwater eutrophication potential and marine eutrophication potential, respectively, for both milk powder and butter production. In addition, packaging materials also has a significant contribution to these environmental impact categories for butter production. Results were also presented for three milk powder products being manufactured by the factories surveyed: skim milk powder, whole milk powder and full fat milk powder. The analysis presented in this paper helps to identify opportunities to reduce the environmental impacts associated with post-farm processing of milk powder and butter.

Avaliação comparativa da pegada de carbono de margarina e manteiga produzidas no Sul do Brasil

“…Existe um número limitado de artigos disponíveis que discutem ACV de manteiga, entre os quais abordam pegada de carbono (FINNEGAN et al, 2017a), e as fronteiras geralmente compreendem o subsistema industrial. A deficiência de estudos sobre margarina foi ainda maior.…”

“…De outro modo, existem produtos que têm função concorrente e que podem ser avaliados comparativamente por avaliação de ciclo de vida (ACV), como são os casos da manteiga e da margarina, que são gorduras para espalhar no pão (tecnicamente denominadas de spread). Assim, a ACV também tem sido realizada para casos específicos, como manteiga (FINNEGAN et al, 2017a), leite (FLYSJÖ et al, 2011), leite em pó (FINNEGAN et al, 2017a), bife (FLYSJÖ et al, 2012) e também para comparação (FLYSJÖ et al, 2012;FINNEGAN et al, 2017a;FINNEGAN et al, 2017b). Para os produtos lácteos, a pegada de carbono tem sido o impacto mais estudado (FLYSJÖ et al, 2011), o que pode ser atribuído ao seu grande impacto na pecuária (SEJIAN et al, 2015), como já destacado.…”

Environmental impacts of chocolate production and consumption in the UK

“…In the base case analysis, the data from Scottish Government (2011) were used which specified that 7.69 kg raw milk was required to produce 1 kg of milk powder. Finnegan et al (2017) reported two different values: 5.12 and 9.22 kg of raw milk/kg milk powder. These two values are considered as part of the sensitivity analysis and the results are shown in Fig.…”

Life Cycle Assessment of a milk protein fractionation process: Contribution of the production and the cleaning stages at unit process level

“…Assessing the environmental impacts at the level of unit operations would be very important and could serve as a basis for evidencing the margins of progress and for system subdivision to properly allocate impacts across the various co-products. Depping et al [9], Santos et al [10], Finnegan et al [7,11], Yan et al [12] and Bacenetti et al [13] to name a few, focus on milk or whey concentration, drying processes, and cheese production. But none of them investigated fractionation processes which are largely used in the dairy industry.…”