Environmental Life Cycle Assessment of a Canned Sardine Product from Portugal

Abstract

SummaryThis study aims to assess the environmental impacts of canned sardines in olive oil, by considering fishing, processing, and packaging, using life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. The case study concerns a product of a canning factory based in Portugal and packed in aluminum cans. It is the first LCA of a processed seafood product made with the traditional canning method. The production of both cans and olive oil are the most important process in the considered impact categories. The production of olives contributes to the high environmental load of olive oil, related to cultivation and harvesting phases. The production of aluminum cans is the most significant process for all impact categories, except ozone depletion potential and eutrophication potential, resulting from the high energy demand and the extraction of raw materials. To compare to other sardine products consumed in Portugal, such as frozen and fresh sardines, transport to the wholesaler and store was added. The environmental cost of canned sardines is almost seven times higher per kilogram of edible product. The main action to optimize the environmental performance of canned sardines is therefore to replace the packaging and diminish the olive oil losses as much as possible. Greenhouse gas emissions are reduced by half when plastic packaging is considered rather than aluminum. Frozen and fresh sardines represent much lower environmental impacts than canned sardines. Nevertheless, when other sardine products are not possible, it becomes feasible to use sardines for human consumption, preventing them from being wasted or used suboptimally as feed. Keywords:canning industrial ecology life cycle assessment (LCA) packaging sardines seafood processing Supporting information is available on the JIE Web site

Life cycle assessment of Ecuadorian processed tuna

“…Construction, structural maintenance and especially EOL are systematically excluded in processed seafood LCA literature (Hospido et al 2006;Iribarren et al 2010;Vázquez-Rowe et al 2014;Almeida et al 2015) and fisheries LCA literature (Avadí and Fréon 2013) under the assumption that their contributions to overall impacts are negligible. In a very fuel-efficient fishery, however, construction and structural maintenance may have non-negligible contributions Fréon et al 2014a); thus, we prophylactically included these life cycle phases for the fishery, and the construction phase for the tuna processing plant (the latter to confirm or deny its perceived negligibility).…”

“…A carbon footprint analysis of Thai tuna canning, based on a fuel-intensive tuna fishery, also identified the provision of raw materials, tinplate cans and process energy as the main drivers of global warming potential (climate change) (Mungkung et al 2012). A recent study of canned sardine from Portugal (Almeida et al 2015), supplied by a fishery with a FUI of 111-113 L/t (Almeida et al 2013), also identified the provision of (aluminium) cans as the main contributor to most impact categories. Another recent study on Peruvian anchoveta processing ) confirms this trend and, moreover, identifies potentials for reducing impacts of fish packaging by favouring pouches or at least larger cans.…”

“…per kilogram of product and kilogram of protein of Ecuadorian tuna products and other animal products from global supply chains Portuguese tuna products(Almeida et al 2015) Peruvian fish productsAvadí et al 2015) Various animal protein sources(Nijdam et al 2012), without packaging Protein content values from the USDA National Nutrient Database for Standard Reference Release 27 http://ndb.nal.usda.gov/ndb/foods; s = number of studies in Nijdam et al (2012) (not redundant with other studies cited in the table), n = number of analysed products in Nijdam et al (2012) Higher FUI FU = 1 t landed tuna ReCiPe single score (Pt)…”

Incorporating linear programing and life cycle thinking into environmental sustainability decision-making: a case study on anchovy canning industry

“…Their normalised results are shown in rows 7 to 10 in Table 2. As previously discussed, changing the packaging material is one of the variables that influences the most the environmental performance of the process (Almeida et al 2015;Hospido et al 2006). However, there is no solution that scores better than the rest for every metric.…”

“…Aluminium and tinplate cans as well as glass jars are already employed in the Cantabrian factory. Furthermore, it is interesting to study other possible materials such as plastic, which is already used by a Danish company as the usual canned appearance(Almeida et al 2015). Four different scenarios are thus distinguished for the assessment of the packaging material: aluminium (SG), tinplate (SH), glass (SI) and plastic (SJ).…”