The environmental burden of cheese production: an LCA study of Tuscan “Pecorino”

Purpose – “Pecorino” is one of the most important Italian cheese obtained by the transformation of sheep milk. The amount produced in Italy is about 30,300 tonnes per year. The aim of this study is to assess the potential environmental impacts connected to Tuscan “Pecorino” production. Methodology/approach – The analysis is carried out through the application of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. LCA allows the assessment of the potential environmental impacts of a product, service, or process through its whole life cycle. The inputs and outputs of the analysed system are related with the functional unit (FU) of 1 kg of “Pecorino”, packaged at dairy farm gate and ready to be distributed. The analysis is founded on a “cradle to gate” approach, in which three different phases are considered: 1) intensive sheep breeding and production of milk; 2) transport of milk from farm to dairy factory; 3) processing of milk in “Pecorino” cheese. Moreover, an economic allocation is carried out to face the problem of multifunctional process in sheep production (milk, meat and wool). Data refer to the consumption of electricity and water, feed production, buildings, machinery, and transport. Primary data are related to all inputs and outputs of the system, except for direct emissions from diesel, fertilizer and pesticide use, and enteric fermentation and manure management, which are obtained from international literature. Furthermore, secondary data (databases) are used to assess the environmental impacts using SimaPro 8.0.2 software. For the life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) all impact categories of CML 2 baseline 2000 method are considered and both characterisation and normalisation phases are carried out. Findings – Characterisation results show that the highest impacts are related to phase 1, followed by phase 3. An analysis in depth of the Global Warming Potential (GWP) category underscores that 1 kg of “Pecorino ”contributes with 21.66 kg CO2 eq. The main impacts for phase 1 (18.62 kg CO2 eq per FU) are related to the emissions from enteric fermentation and manure management, and to feed production, while for phase 3 (2.99 kg CO2 eq per FU) to the 1141 Full papers Adnan Aktepe Location selection for post-disaster service supply with fuzzy hybrid multi-criteria decision making model electricity consumption during cheese manufacturing. On the contrary, the lowest contribution to GWP is connected to the transport phase (0.05 kg CO2 eq per FU). Normalisation results underscore that the main impacts are related to marine aquatic ecotoxicity (7.86E-10 Pt per FU) and fresh water ecotoxicity (5.02E-10 Pt per FU) categories mainly due to feed production in phase 1 and electricity consumption in phases 1 and 3. Research limitation/implication – The main environmental impacts of “Pecorino” cheese production are connected to the processes in the intensive sheep farm. In this context, a potential solution to reduce the impacts could be the partial substitution of the intensive system farm with an extensive method, in order to reduce the animal feed production (i.e. free pasture, less use of chemicals in fields, etc.). Consequently, a comparison between different sheep farming systems will be the focus of future research activities. Originality/value – The paper identifies the environmental burden of one of the most important Italian dairy production. Furthermore, it underscores the high impacts associated with an intensive livestock farming and animal feed production.