Abstract
The Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology was applied to identify the potential environmental impact of dredged sediments used as growing media for food crops. The dredged sediments used came from Livorno port and were previously phytoremediated. For the assay, strawberry plants (Fragaria x ananassa Duch vr. ‘San Andreas’) were used. The plants were cultivated on three different substrates (100% peat, 100% dredged sediment and 50% mix peat/sediment) to identify the real impact of the culture media on the growing process. LCA was calculated and analyzed according to ISO 14040:2006 by SimaPro software. ReCipe Midpoint (E) V1.13/Europe Recipe E method was applied. One kilogram of produced strawberry, for each crop media tested, was defined as the functional unit. Eighteen impact categories were selected where Marine Eutrophication (ME), Human Toxicity (HT) and Freshwater Ecotoxicity (FET) were identified as relevant impact categories. The LCA results showed an increase in the environmental impact of strawberry cultivation using 100% sediment against 100% peat, due to the decrease in fruit production caused by the sediment. Nevertheless, the decrease in the environmental impact and the fruit production increase identified when the sediment is used mixed (<50%) with other substrates. The appropriate use of these substrates would be justified within the context of the circular economy.
Highlights
Aiming to maintain the viability of the ports, and guarantee the transit of cargo ships, it is necessary to periodically perform dredging activities
All the inputs and outputs turn out to be larger in SIII than in SII, and these, in turn, are greater than those of the production in SI (Table 4)
The global water consumptions in SI with peat is superior to SII and SIII, when these are analyzed from the point of view of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), that is, normalized to the functional unit (Table 4), it is verified that the behavior of the production of ‘San Andreas’ strawberry under SI is the one that presents a better environmental behavior since it corresponds with a lower demand of this input per kilogram of fruit produced
Summary
Aiming to maintain the viability of the ports, and guarantee the transit of cargo ships, it is necessary to periodically perform dredging activities These dredged sediments are often considered contaminated and present an important problem to port management. The high specific costs of decontamination treatments mean that in most cases it is not economically sustainable to use these substrates. For this reason, it is necessary that the sediment management options will be identified for each port and that the choice between one alternative or another maintains a sustainability approach that considers economic, environmental and social aspects [2].
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