Life-cycle assessment Archives

Contact

Guðrún Svana Hilmarsdóttir

Specialist

gudrun.svana@matis.is

The production and pollution of plastic present a significant threat to global ecosystems, where annual plastic emissions in aquatic ecosystems are projected to triple between 2020 and 2030. Currently, plastics are widely used for food packaging but depending on the polymers, properties, the recyclability ratio of the plastics varies. Polymers, such as polyethylene (PE), polyurethane (PUR), and expanded polystyrene (EPS), are widely used for packaging and transporting foods such as fresh fish, where multi-use fish tubs often consist of PE and/or PUR and single-use boxes of EPS. This study evaluated the environmental impacts of reusable tubs of different volumes and sizes made of PE/PUR vs single-use EPS boxes, transporting 1000 tons (T) of fresh fish from Iceland to Europe, per year based on life cycle assessment methodology. This is to identify the packaging solution with the lowest environmental impact. The overall results show that multi-use tubs had lower environmental impacts when transporting 1000 T of fresh fish from Iceland to Europe per year, even during the first year of use. For Global warming impacts, producing and using EPS boxes for transporting 1000 T of fresh fish was 141 T CO₂-eq and ranged from 4 to 46 T CO₂-eq for varying multi-use packaging solutions for one year. The weight of the raw materials (plastics) and size of the tubs were key factors affecting the environmental impacts when transporting the tubs.

Contact

Sigurjón Arason

Chief Engineer

sigurjon.arason@matis.is

This study assessed the environmental impacts of a pelagic fishmeal and fish oil production plant in Iceland with the life cycle assessment methodology. The study focused on assessing the effects of different energy sources for utility production due to the high energy intensity of fishmeal and fish oil production, as quality improved with lower cooking temperature. The environmental hotspots of three different processing scenarios were assessed, where the factory was run on hydropower (Scenario 0), heavy fuel (Scenario 1) and a composition of both (Scenario 2), from cradle-to-factory gate. Midpoint results showed that the raw material acquisition contributed the most to the environmental impact when the fishmeal factory was operating on hydropower. However, drying had the highest impact when heavy fuel oil was used for utility production. This study also demonstrated that lowering the cooking temperature from 90 to 85 °C, led to improved quality and simultaneously reduced environmental impacts during processing. This indicated that a small energy adjustment in the production can have an environmental gain, demonstrating the necessity to optimize each processing step in the fishmeal and fish oil production process both for increased product quality and minimizing environmental impacts.