Life Cycle Assessment for the sustainability measurement of the winemaking chain

Graziella Benedetto - University of Sassari

Claudio Pattara - University of Pescara

Paris, 16 april 2015 – ANAECO Group

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Overview

-Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) within international scientific literature;

-How LCA works?;

- Carbon Footprint (CF) and LCA comparison;

- LCA's hot-spots in wine sector;

- Future research topics;

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) within international scientific literature

- This analysis technique is well-established and its potential have been released

to calculate environmental emissions associated with a product or process also

extremely articulate that ranges from the field:

- building (Lavagna, 2011);

- waste management at local level (Buttol et al, 2007; Cherubini et al, 2007;

De Feo, Malvano, 2008; Rigamonti et al, 2009; Scipioni & Niero, 2011);

- tourism systems (De Camillis et al., 2010)

- food and beverages (e.g. Rugani et al., 2013; Notarnicola et al., 2015) including the wine sector, which is also the area where the different approaches of LCA have been most tested;

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) within International Certification

- Certification of environmental management process (ISO 14001 series): concerns the environmental management of the organizations, and allows to obtain a certificate of compliance with the requirements contained in the environmental management standard, obtained by third party accredited to the ISO; is a voluntary certification (ec.europa.eu);

- Ethic certification SA8000 o Social Accountability (www.sa-intl.org): is an international standard, issued by accredited impartial external body, which recognizes the company responsible behavior regarding social ethics and the respect of strictly certain criteria relating to the business management system, related to corporate social responsibility (SA8000);

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Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) within International certification

- OHSAS (Occupational Health and Safety Assessment Series) 18001-ISO (45001 – 2016), identifies an international standard for management systems Safety and Occupational Health. The rule was enacted in 1999 by the BSI (British Standards Institution) and revised in 2007 and attests to the voluntary application of a system that provides control over the safety of workers (www.ohsas.org);

- EPD, is a tool that increases the environmental communication between producers (business to business) and between distributors and consumers (business to consumers) based on the use of LCA; It was developed in Sweden, has international importance and is structured implementation and enforcement of the UNI ISO 14025: 2006; provides objective, comparable and credible regarding the environmental performance of products and services and allows for comparison between products of the

same class (EPD);

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How LCA works?LCA is a “cradle-to-grave” approach for assessing industrial systems. “Cradle-to-grave” begins with the gathering of raw materials from the earth, to create the product, and ends at the point when all materials are returned to the earth.

The term “life cycle” refers to the major activities in the course of the product’s life-span from its manufacture, use, and maintenance, to its final disposal, including the raw material acquisition required to manufacture the product.

Life Cycle stages – EPA, 1993

Raw material

Energy

INPUTS OUTPUTS

System boundaries

Atmospheric emissions

Waterborne wastes

Solid wastes

Co-products

Other releases

Raw materials acquisition

Manufacturing

Use/Reuse/Maintenance

Recycle/Waste management

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How LCA works?LCA (ISO 14040 and 14044) is “ the compiling and evaluation of the inputs and outputs and the potential environmental impacts of a product system during a product's lifetime” (p. 8)

According to the ISO standards it consist of four steps: 1. Goal Definition and Scoping - Define and describe the product, process or activity. Establish the context in which the assessment is to be made and identify the boundaries and environmental effects to be reviewed for the assessment. 2. Inventory Analysis - Identify and quantify energy, water and materials usage and environmental releases (e.g., air emissions, solid waste disposal, waste water discharges). 3. Impact Assessment - Assess the potential human and ecological effects of energy, water, and material usage and the environmental releases identified in the inventory analysis. 4. Interpretation - Evaluate the results of the inventory analysis and impact assessment to select the preferred product, process or service with a clear understanding of the uncertainty and the assumptions used to generate the results.

High quality and environmental profile High quality and environmental profile for a winefor a wine

The production trend in Italy is moving towards high quality wines

41 DOCG (controlled and guaranteed denomination of origin)

36 DOC (controlled denomination of origin)

120 IGT (typical geographical indication) wines.

Quality of wineQuality of wine

Environmental profileEnvironmental profile

Environmental burden of a product –

Life Cycle Assessment

Environmental burden of a product –

Life Cycle Assessment

Environmental comunication

Environmental comunication EPDEPD Carbon

footprintCarbon footprint

The application of LCA on The application of LCA on agri-food products - wine agri-food products - wine

The application of LCA to wine industry presents various problems common to all agri-food products.

It is necessary to analyse the chain in:

an agricultural phase - an industrial phase

The difficulties are due to the complexity of this activity where technology is just as important grape quality or

skills Winemakers.

The difficulties are due to the complexity of this activity where technology is just as important grape quality or

skills Winemakers.

LCA - CFPLCA - CFP

-Lack of accurate baseline data was confirmed

and the need of further improvement and

adaptation to additional contexts was

highlighted;

-The calculator carries out an accurate

assessment of emissions as it contains effective

tools capable of providing concise information

analysing all phases of wine production;

-CF seems to be more suitable as a marketing

tool;

- LCA seems to be more effective in avoiding environmental burdens and impacts to be shifted from:

- one life-cycle step to another;

- or from one environmental concern to another;

The wine industrywine industry has been increasingly impelled by market and regulatory drivers to

assess and reduce carbon emissions;

As expected, despite a few differences in framework and modelling, results concerning global warming are

rather consistent

CFPCFP LCALCA-Multi-indicator methodology, covering « a diversity of environmental impacts and may include comparison across impact categories» (Finnveden et al, 2009, p. 2)

LCA??? <=>CFP???LCA??? <=>CFP???

• LCA:– B2B;

– improving the sustainability (environmental economic and social) of the sector;

• CFP:– B2C; a “catchy” concept «promoted and diffused outside

the research community», useful «to promote a more consistent framework for environmental assessment of products and services» (Weidema et al, 2008, p. 6);

– fight the most immediate challenges (global warming);

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GoalGoal and scope in wine sector and scope in wine sector-LCA applied to the wine sector is primarily aimed at

attributing part of the total environmental burden of the

economy to the wine production processes, to allow company

to identify 'HOT SPOTS' or critical phases of the LC of wine

and for communication purposes (Aranda et al, 2006;

Benedetto, 2010; Vázquez-Rowe et al, 2013);

-LCA is of particular relevance when the aim of the wine firm is to reduce the CF of their

product using specific environmental strategies such as eco-labeling (Ardente et al, 2006;

CIV, 2008; Barry, 2011; Gonzalez et al, 2006), mitigation of GHG emissions (Bosco et al,

2011);

-Despite the strong proliferation of wine CF studies in recent years, some extensive review

(Rugani et al, 2013) demonstrates the wide range of applications that remain unexplored in

this field. To date, most studies have focused on analyzing specific methodological issues

froman A-LCA perspective, or to directly reporting the CF profile of a given wine product.

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LCA's LCA's hot-spotshot-spots for wine production chain (Notarnicola et al, 2014) for wine production chain (Notarnicola et al, 2014)

1. cultivation stage, mainly because of pesticides and fertilizers;– mostly on Ecotoxicity (ECT) and Human Toxicity (HT) – strictly

dependent on the use of pesticides, affecting water and soil toxicity and the human toxicity of workers in the field;

– contribution on Eutrophication (NP) and Acidification (AP) – essentially depends on the use of nitrogen and phosphate fertilisers; while NP is caused by water releases of phosphated and nitrates and to air emissions of Nox and NH3, AP is due to emissions of Nox occurring during the fertilisers use;

2. Packaging, mainly because of the production of glass used for bottling; it especially affects energy consumpion, GWP, HT and AP;

3. Electric energy consumption in the winery; the stage with the highest energy consumpion is the bottling, which accounts for about 60% of the total energy consumption, followed by the refrigeration phase;

4. Distribution, because of fuel consumption in transportation processes: this stage is relevant when the winery and the retailer are at some distance from each other. Because the export of wine is increasingly by sea, the consumption of fossil fuels and the transportation means are elements that usually play a significant role in the generation of impacts such as GWP (Notarnicola et al 2014, pag. 169);

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Future research topicsFuture research topics- Future studies will have to deal with increasingly complex interactions linked to the entire life cycle of wine-making. -Current methodological hot topics in life cycle thinking suggest that an integrated sustainability assessment (i.e. LCSA), which includes the evaluation of economic and social issues, will also develop in the wine sector, where by it may become easier beginning with a CF analysis and then broadening the scope to the other two pillars of sustainability.

-However, from an exclusively environmental sustainability approach, it remains to be seen if current climate change focalization, through CF reporting, will be maintained, or if it will be expanded to cover other environmental issues such as impacts related to land use change (BSI, 2011b; IPCC, 2006).

-Parallelly, a widespread use of the CF in combination with other single-issue indicators would be recommended to increase transparency and impacts coverage, avoid value judgments and arbitrary weighing and promote integrated perspectives.

-While CF is an outstanding indicator for supply chain improvements and enterprise communications (internal and external), it seems less useful to evaluate strategies and take decisions at macro scale. -Finally, from a market supply and demand perspective, future standardization developments in wine CF will start to provide feedback on the success or failure of eco-labeling dissemination strategies and how their implementation will influence consumer behavior and patterns.

Critical Issue for LCA-CFPCritical Issue for LCA-CFP

Finding Accurate data:

– identify as much work as possible available on LCA studies on wine, published at national and international level

– prepare an exhaustive database with which to work to evaluate the state of the art of this study sector.

DATABASE Of

WINE LCA

Scientific database

University library

database

Papers of international conferences

on LCA

Internet for

“grey literature”

The sources for database creation