Life cycle assessment of sea cucumber production: A case study, China

Abstract

Environmental pollution caused by aquaculture production has become an increasing problem in China. In the present study, life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to evaluate and analyze the environmental impact of sea cucumber (Apostichopus japonicas) production in Dalian as an example for Chinese aquaculture cleaner production (CP) research. The production process included three stages: feeding, farming, and processing. In addition, to analyze the key factors that influence the environmental performance, the feeding stage was divided into breeding and culturing phases; the farming stage was divided into planting and harvesting phases; and the processing stage comprised sorting, stewing, salting, and freezing phases. The popular LCA software tool GaBi and the CML-2001 method for a problem-oriented approach to LCA were used to calculate the environmental impact at each stage and phase of the sea cucumber production process. The results showed that the normalization results of LCA in the three stages were 1.21 E−08 yr, 2.44 E−10 yr, and 1.11 E−09 yr, respectively. The feeding stage had the greatest environmental impact, because high levels of electricity, fossil fuel, and water are required to maintain the culturing water temperature and oxygen status for juvenile sea cucumbers. Moreover, from the analysis of the LCA normalization results in each phase, we found that the marine aquatic ecotoxicity potential (MAETP) was the largest contributor to the environmental impact, with electricity use, water requirements, and fossil fuel consumption as the key factors that affected the results. Improvement measures toward CP in each stage were proposed, such as energy substitution (nuclear energy, natural gas, or solar-energy), water reduction (microecologics), and bio-waste management (bio-waste recycling). These measures will provide a reference for policy makers and enterprise managers to enact strategies to improve the sustainability of Chinese aquaculture.