Life cycle assessment of Ecuadorian processed tuna

Abstract

Ecuador is an important player in the global tuna fishing and processing industry: The Ecuadorian industrial tuna fleet represents 17 % of the global tuna purse seiner fleet, and it is the second largest tuna processing country after Thailand. The fishing and processing operations of one of the largest vertically integrated tuna processing firms in Ecuador were evaluated regarding their environmental impacts and assumed representative of the Ecuadorian tuna processing industry. Results were compared with those of other international fish processing and other sources of animal protein for human consumption. Directions are finally identified toward reducing environmental impacts of both the tuna fishery and processing industry. Detailed operational fishery and processing data was collected from a representative Ecuadorian tuna processing firm, and the life cycle assessment framework applied to it for hotspot identification. Two functional units were used: 1 t of final product (for canned, pouched, vacuum bagged and mean products) and 1 t of “fish in product”, which includes all process losses and normalises the final product/raw fish ratios among the different processing routes analysed. The ReCiPe impact assessment method was used. In the period 2012–2013, the studied sub-fleet featured a fuel use intensity of 835 L per landed tonne, which was 235 % higher than reported values for all tuna landings in the Pacific Ocean in 2009. Reasons for such underperformance may include inter-annual variations in tuna catchability and the fact that fuels are generally subsidised in Ecuador, and thus skippers perhaps do not apply sufficient fuel-saving strategies. The main contributors to impacts associated with tuna processing were the provision of tinplate cans (58.0 % of the ReCiPe single score) and fuel use by the fishery (22.6 %). Ecuadorian tuna products feature environmental impacts generally higher than those of other fish processing industries worldwide, yet lower than those of many alternative sources of fish and land animal protein. Efforts to reduce environmental impacts of Ecuadorian tuna processing should focus on the fuel performance of the providing fleet, and on the container technology. Increased use of larger tinplate cans, aluminium cans, or other non-metal container technologies (e.g. pouches and retort cups) would decrease environmental impacts of tuna processing. The sources of relative inefficiency observed for the Ecuadorian tuna fleet should be thoroughly investigated. Possible solutions could involve applying fuel-saving strategies.