Integrated environmental permit through Best Available Techniques: Evaluation of the dairy industry

Abstract

Galicia (NW Spain) has been the first national milk producer with production rates oscillating between 25.7% and 39.1%, of the total milk produced in Spain between 2001 and 2014. Dairy industry is one of the most important food activities in this geographical region; only fish processing industry (data from 2014) precedes its annual turnover.Research related to sustainability in this sector has proved that farming is the most polluting process associated to the life cycle. Nevertheless, the prevention and control of emissions to air, water and soil, as well as waste generation derived from the industrial process, cannot be omitted. This is the objective of the Directive 2010/75/EU on industrial emissions (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, IPPC). The industrial activities included in its Annex I (as the dairy industry) must, among others, implement the Best Available Techniques (BATs), to achieve a high level of protection of the environment taken as a whole.This paper analyses the degree of implementation of the IPPC Directive in the dairy industry of Galicia, selecting 5 dairy industrial installations in the framework of the IPPC. The used methodology was proposed previously and applied for validation to the fish and seafood caning industry (Bello Bugallo et al., 2013). The environmental performance of these plants was analysed using, among others, the first environmental permits and taking into account the last modifications published in the official journal, as a source of information about the degree of implementation of the BAT and the associated emission levels. The results give an updated inventory of BAT for the dairy industry, the comparative between plants, the number of implemented BAT, the emissions and the overall environmental performance of each plant.The main conclusions indicate that the degree of implementation of BAT is, in general, quite poor especially those related to waste management. The 2 plants “theoretically” with the largest number of BAT implemented are the most pollutant ones (taken into account emissions). The reason is not that BATs are not effective but every plant has its particularities (age, the kind of fuel used, and so on) and therefore, each one has its own needs from an environmental point of view. Then BAT should be selected for the most pollutant flows, the so called Improvable Flows (IF). These IF must be identified previously with adequate tools, followed by the selection of the appropriate BATs from an updated inventory. This analysis could be extrapolated and applied to the rest of the installations of this sector.