Environmental life cycle assessment of Italian mozzarella cheese: Hotspots and improvement opportunities

Abstract

The present study investigated a cradle-to-grave life cycle assessment to estimate the environmental impacts associated with Italian mozzarella cheese consumption. The differences between mozzarella produced from raw milk and mozzarella produced from curd were studied, and differences in manufacturing processes have been emphasized in order to provide guidance for targeted improvements at this phase. Specifically, the third-largest Italian mozzarella producer was surveyed to collect site-specific manufacturing data. The Ecoinvent v3.2 database was used for secondary data, whereas SimaPro 8.1 was the modeling software. The inventory included inputs from farm activities to end of life disposal of wasted mozzarella and packaging. Additionally, plant-specific information was used to assign major inputs, such as electricity, natural gas, packaging, and chemicals to specific products; however, where disaggregated information was not provided, milk solids allocation was applied. Notably, loss of milk solids was accounted during the manufacture, moreover mozzarella waste and transport were considered during distribution, retail, and consumption phases. Feed production and animal emissions were the main drivers of raw milk production. Electricity and natural gas usage, packaging (cardboard and plastic), transport, wastewater treatment, and refrigerant loss affected the emissions from a farm gate-to-dairy plant gate perspective. Post-dairy plant gate effects were mainly determined by electricity usage for storage of mozzarella, transport of mozzarella, and waste treatment. The average emissions were 6.66 kg of CO equivalents and 45.1 MJ of cumulative energy demand/kg of consumed mozzarella produced directly from raw milk, whereas mozzarella from purchased curd had larger emissions than mozzarella from raw milk due to added transport of curd from specialty manufacturing plants, as well as electricity usage from additional processes at the mozzarella plant that are required to process the curd into mozzarella. Normalization points to ecotoxicity as the impact category most significantly influenced by mozzarella consumption. From a farm gate-to-grave perspective, ecotoxicity and freshwater and marine eutrophication are the first and second largest contributors of mozzarella consumption to average European effects, respectively. To increase environmental sustainability, an improvement of efficiency for energy and packaging usage and transport activities is recommended in the post-farm gate mozzarella supply chain.

Effect of frozen and refrigerated storage on proteolysis and physicochemical properties of high-moisture citric mozzarella cheese

“…Fresh mozzarella cheese needs to be transported rapidly (e.g., air transport) with robust cold chain controls, and slower means of transportation (e.g., sea transport) are not suitable to reach long-distance markets. However, considering the high costs and large environmental footprint of air transport (Dalla Riva et al, 2017), sea transport would be preferred. In this context, freezing and frozen storage of HM mozzarella is a preferred solution to improve storability of the product, decrease waste, and create a more sustainable supply chain (Tejada et al, 2000;Alvarenga et al, 2013).…”

Life cycle inventory and assessment data for quantifying the environmental impacts of a wide range of food products belonging to the same food category: A case study of 80 pizzas representatives of the French retail market

“…However, the AGRIBALYSE 3.0 database only distinguishes a few major categories of cheese. Importantly, the environmental impact of a variety of cheeses is highly dependent on the amount of milk used [6] , [7] , [8] . Ripening time also plays an important role in the overall environmental impact of cheese because of the electricity consumption involved [9] .…”

A meta-analysis of LCAs for environmental assessment of a conceptual system: Phosphorus recovery from dairy wastewater

“…Even with DWWT, this impact is still important according to the reviewed studies, and it is dominated by the discharge of nutrients in the effluents and influenced by various processes in the dairy industry. The nutrients in wastewater originate from losses of both raw milk and dairy products (Dalla-Riva et al, 2017), but also from detergents used in the cleaning process (Eide, 2002). Another important factor which influences the eutrophication impact is dairy size (Stanchev et al, 2020).…”