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Item type:Publication, Identifying environmental impacts linked to the production of plant-based spreads in Peru using life cycle assessment(Elsevier B.V., 2024-06-01)Plant-based spread products, such as margarine, are made up of a combination of diverse ingredients, many times arriving from different parts of the world. This makes their environmental impact challenging to compute. In Latin America, despite efforts in recent years to enlarge the number of food items that have been analyzed from an environmental perspective, many processed products remain unexplored. In this context, the main objective of the current study was to determine the environmental impacts of a set of five plant-based spread products in Peru using life cycle assessment. For this, primary data were collected from the main margarine producer up to the gate of the agroindustrial plant ready for distribution. Methodological choices, such as allocation, the computation of land use changes (LUCs) or agricultural management variability, were an important subset of variables to be considered in the life cycle modeling and accounted for through scenario and sensitivity analyses. Results demonstrated that greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions related to margarine production in Peru range from 1.66 to 6.00 kg CO2eq per kilogram of product, in a similar range to other studies in the literature. LUCs accounted for the highest contribution to GHG emissions, whereas crude oil extraction, as well as on field fertilizer emissions were the other main contributors. In other impact categories, plant protection agents were relevant in toxicity indicators, fertilization in eutrophication and transport in air quality-related categories. These results constitute a benchmark for the production of plant-based products in Latin America and are useful for attaining cleaner production, as well as for the optimization of ingredients and packaging design. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Applying the multi-dimensional damage assessment (MDDA) methodology to the Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption in La Palma (Spain)(Springer Science and Business Media B.V., 2024-12-01)Volcanic events with an important affectation of urban areas and other land areas with important human activity have been rare in Europe in the past century. This has led to a lack of comprehensive analysis of the social, economic and environmental damages that these types of events can cause on specific human communities. In the present study, we apply an industrial ecology approach to calculate the damage linked to the Cumbre Vieja volcanic eruption in the Canary Islands in September 2021. Therefore, the main objective was to apply the multi-dimensional damage assessment (MDDA) methodology to quantify the degree of damage that has been exerted by the eruption in the island of La Palma (Spain) through the inclusion of environmental damage endpoints with other sustainable development variables (i.e., social and economic dimensions). Data were obtained from different sources, including the cadastre of La Palma, local data on derived health, as well as data obtained from the global ecosystem dynamics investigation of NASA, among other sources. Thereafter, damage endpoints were all converted to disability-adjusted life years (DALYs). Results show that direct gaseous emissions from the volcano were responsible for a significant amount of total DALYs, above 90% in all scenarios, followed by damage linked to economic losses, as well as social losses related to morbidity. Other environmental damages played a minor part in the total damage exerted by the volcano. The results demonstrate the importance of air quality indicators in the aftermath of an eruption in densely populated areas; in contrast, the impact associated with infrastructure loss played a minor role in total damage. Although challenges remain when providing a holistic quantification of total damage linked to volcanic disasters, the MDDA method constitutes a promising systematic standardized and transparent damage quantification tool that allows computing a deterministic damage evaluation that can aid in natural hazard risk assessment. In fact, it is considered that the method has the potential to be used as a holistic decision tool to aid in mitigating disaster risk.