Global warming potential associated with Irish milk powder production

Abstract

Climate change is an ever growing issue and a major concern worldwide. Both producers and processors need to address the issue now by reducing their carbon footprint. Additionally, if Ireland is to meet their climate and energy targets, as outlined in Food Harvest 2020, which outlines a range of objectives for the Irish agricultural sector, the efficient use of resources and fuels within the industry will need to be increased. In Ireland, agriculture accounts for 29.2% of the total greenhouse gas emissions (58.5 million tonnes CO2eq). Therefore, in this paper, a single agri-food product, milk powder, is examined in order to estimate the global warming potential (GWP) associated with its manufacture using life cycle assessment. A cradle-to-processing factory gate analysis, which includes raw milk production, raw milk transportation to the processing factory, its processing into each product and product packaging, is assessed in this study using data collected circa 2013. The factories surveyed processed approximately 24%of the total raw milk processed in the Republic of Ireland in 2013, which was 5.83 billion liters. The average total GWP associated with the manufacture of milk powder is 9.731 kg CO2eq∙kg–1 milk powder, which has a standard deviation of 2.26 kg CO2eq∙kg–1 milk powder, for the life cycle stages analyzed in this study. The most significant contributor to GWP is raw milk production (84%), followed by dairy processing (14%), with the remainder of the life cycle stages contributing approximately 2%.