Environmental life cycle assessment of yoghurt supply to consumer in Turkey

Abstract

The life cycle environmental impacts of yoghurt supply to the end user in Turkey were investigated. Turkey is the second biggest yoghurt producer in the world; therefore reducing the environmental footprint of yoghurt production is of utmost importance from cleaner production and sustainability points of view. The functional unit was chosen as 1 ton of yoghurt, CCaLC2™ was used as software, and CML2001 methodology was used. A cradle-to-grave approach was employed. The production processes were modelled based on real life data acquired from a major yoghurt production company in Turkey. Six impacts (global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, photochemical oxidant creation potential, ozone layer depletion potential, and human toxicity potential) were calculated. All of the impacts turned out to be higher than the values reported in the literature (differences ranging from 18% to 76%), which was attributed to the high amounts of milk loss and the high energy intensity of yoghurt production processes combined with the fact that the energy resources used for thermal energy and electricity supply in Turkey have high environmental footprints. Except for ozone layer depletion, all impacts were found to be mainly caused by raw material supply and production processes, with these two stages having a combined average contribution of 80%. Choosing different end-of-life treatment methods (landfilling versus incineration) affected the results by no more than 4%. None of the impacts except for ozone layer depletion potential were found to be sensitive to transportation distances,. It was concluded that, in order to reduce the environmental footprint of yoghurt production, the electrical energy input to the production process should be obtained from more environmentally friendly resources such as solar photovoltaics whereas heat energy should be supplied from cleaner resources such as natural gas instead of coal.