Global warming potential associated with dairy products in the Republic of Ireland

Finnegan, William; Goggins, Jamie; Clifford, Eoghan; Zhan, Xinmin

doi:10.1016/j.jclepro.2015.08.025

Cited by 48 publications

(43 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…There is a limited number of papers available which discuss milk powder and butter processing and these only explore the impact on climate change. Therefore, the GWP results of the presented analysis (Table 4) have been compared to the results of Sheane et al (2011), which estimated the carbon footprint associated with the Scottish dairy supply chain, Flysjö (2012), which estimated the carbon footprint of milk and dairy product chains using data from a European company, and Finnegan et al (2015), where a macro-scale study assessing the GWP associated with dairy products produced in the Republic of Ireland was performed.…”

Section: Comparison With International Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…LCA has been used in studies of many major manufacturing countries of dairy products in order to evaluate the environmental and socio-economic impacts of the industry and its products as summarised by (Finnegan et al, 2015). However, a limited number of these studies consider the environmental impact of milk powder (Finnegan et al, 2015;Flysjö, 2012;Flysjö et al, 2014;Vergé et al, 2013) and butter (Djekic et al, 2014;Doublet et al, 2013;Finnegan et al, 2015;Flysjö, 2012;Flysjö et al, 2014;Nilsson et al, 2010;Sheane et al, 2011;Vergé et al, 2013) manufacture. In many of these studies, milk powder and butter have been included in an analysis of various dairy products.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A cradle to factory gate boundary condition was used and a number of environmental impacts, including global warming potential, acidification potential and eutrophication potential, were estimated. Previously, Finnegan et al (2015) estimated the global warming potential associated with the production of dairy products in the Republic of Ireland using country-level data.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Finnegan

Goggins

Clifford

et al. 2017

Science of The Total Environment

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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.

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Section: Comparison With International Studiesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

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

Finnegan

Goggins

Clifford

et al. 2017

Science of The Total Environment

Self Cite

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show abstract

“…Life cycle assessment (LCA), based on ISO 14040 and ISO 14044 LCA methodology (ISO 2006a,b), is a scientific method recognized worldwide to assess environmental burdens through the life cycle of a product; it has been used in several studies to assess environmental consequences of cheese production. Some authors (González-García et al, 2013a,b;Broekema and Kramer, 2014;Trevisan and Corrado, 2014;Finnegan et al, 2015) have investigated environmental impacts in the cheese life cycle, where general results show dairy farm activities and feed production as the main hot spots for impacts, followed by the manufacturing, distribution, and consumption phases. Fewer studies specifically assess the effect of the mozzarella life cycle.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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

Riva

Burek

Kim

et al. 2017

Journal of Dairy Science

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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.

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“…In addition, a large number of scientific studies have focussed on reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions per unit of milk only (Casey and Holden, 2005;Flysjö, 2011;Thoma et al, 2013;Finnegan et al, 2015). One the one hand, climate change is considered to be a very important environmental challenge to the planet (Steffen et al, 2015).…”

Section: Selection Of a Set Of Indicators That Can Explain Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Benchmarking the environmental performance of dairy farming systems

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Global warming potential associated with dairy products in the Republic of Ireland

Cited by 48 publications

References 29 publications

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

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

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

Benchmarking the environmental performance of dairy farming systems

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