Environmental and economic sustainability of fresh-cut and pre-cooked vegetables.

Due to the growing awareness about the environmental and economic sustainability of food products, the present research aims to evaluate the sustainability of fresh-cut and pre-cooked vegetables, a niche market with growing demand. An analysis was carried out using a detailed material, energy, and economic inventory based on a commercial food processing plant located in northeast Spain. The environmental sustainability was determined using process-based environmental life cycle assessment (E-LCA), applying a cradle-to-market approach, and using the EF3.0 impact assessment methodology to quantify impacts on five midpoint categories (climate change, photochemical ozone formation, acidification, freshwater eutrophication, and fossil resource use) and an aggregated single score. Additionally, an environmental life cycle costing (E-LCC) was performed. The pre-cooked vegetable products showed a higher environmental footprint than the fresh-cut products in all the impact categories (between 14.0 % and 39.9 %) and involved higher life cycle costs (15.2 %), due to the increased demand for ingredients, packaging materials, and electricity consumption per FU (kg of product). The carbon footprint (CF) and the cost for the fresh-cut products were 0.72 kg CO2 eq/kg and 2.62 €/kg, respectively, compared to 0.86 kg CO2/kg and 3.02 €/kg for the pre-cooked vegetables. The environmental profiles of both products were rather similar, with a dominance of the Upstream stage (production of ingredients and packaging materials), followed by the Core stage (mainly due to electricity consumed during vegetable processing). The relevance of the Core stage is amplified in the economic analysis due to the incorporation of certain processes which were not included in the process-based E-LCA (e.g., labour, capital, insurance, maintenance costs, etc.). To integrate the economic and environmental analyses, an eco-efficiency index was calculated that describes the carbon emissions per unit of monetary cost, resulting in 0.27 kg CO2eq/€ for the fresh-cut and 0.28 kg CO2 eq/€ for the pre-cooked vegetables.

Using a detailed inventory of a large wastewater treatment plant to estimate the relative importance of construction to the overall environmental impacts.

The aim of this work is to quantify the relative contribution to the overall environmental impact of the construction phase compared to the operational phase for a large conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment plant (WWTP). To estimate these environmental impacts, a systematic procedure was designed to obtain the detailed Life Cycle Inventories (LCI) for civil works and equipment, taking as starting point the construction project budget and the list of equipment installed at the Girona WWTP, which are the most reliable information sources of materials and resources used during the construction phase. A detailed inventory is conducted by including 45 materials for civil works and 1,240 devices for the equipment. For most of the impact categories and different life spans of the WWTP, the contribution of the construction phase to the overall burden is higher than 5% and, especially for metal depletion, the impact of construction reaches 63%. When comparing to the WWTP inventories available in Ecoinvent the share of construction obtained in this work is about 3 times smaller for climate change and twice higher for metal depletion. Concrete and reinforcing steel are the materials with the highest contribution to the civil works phase and motors, pumps and mobile and transport equipment are also key equipment to consider during life cycle inventories of WWTPs. Additional robust inventories for similar WWTP can leverage this work by applying the factors (kg of materials and energy per m3 of treated water) and guidance provided.

Assessing Urban Wastewater System Upgrades Using Integrated Modeling, Life Cycle Analysis, and Shadow Pricing.

This study assesses the environmental impacts of four measures proposed for upgrading of the urban wastewater system of Eindhoven and the Dommel River in The Netherlands, against the base case, "do-nothing" option. The measures aim to reduce the overall environmental impact of the Eindhoven urban wastewater system (UWS) by targeting river dissolved oxygen depletion and ammonia peaks, reducing combined sewer overflows, and enhancing nutrient removal. The measures are evaluated using a life cycle analysis with the boundaries including the receiving river section by means of an integrated model of the UWS. An uncertainty analysis of the estimated impacts has been performed to support the outcomes. The study also uses the economic concept of shadow prices to assign relative weights of socio-economic importance to the estimated life cycle impacts. This novel integration of tools complements the assessments of this UWS with the inclusion of long-term global environmental impacts and the investigation of trade-offs between different environmental impacts through a single monetary unit. The results support the selection of deeper clarifiers as the most environmentally beneficial measure for upgrade.