Abstract
Most food manufacturers in industrialised countries produce significant amounts of food wastes during their manufacturing activities. Due to the serious environmental consequences of managing these materials, environmental impact analyses have become popular to identify more sustainable practices for food waste management. Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a useful methodology to assess such environmental impacts. This paper presents the main results obtained using the LCA methodology to analyse the potential environmental impacts of waste management for a brewery in the UK. Initially, the main waste types are identified for this industry: barley straw, malt waste and spent grain, and then barley straw is selected to study its environmental impact in detail. An alternative, more sustainable way to manage barley straw by extracting its wax with supercritical CO2 is discussed. SimaPro software is used to both quantify potential environmental impacts and evaluate the overall environmental performance of this valorisation opportunity, and to compare its modelled environmental impacts to the current impacts of managing barley straw. Results show that valorising barley straw by this method generates a high environmental impact due to the energy requirements of the processes involved, principally for human toxicity (cancer effects), human toxicity (non-cancer effects) and freshwater ecotoxicity impact categories. Using more energy-efficient processes or an alternative energy source would reduce this environmental impact. The analysis used in this paper allows an objective comparison between different scenarios with the final aim of supporting the use of sustainable solutions for waste management in the food industry.
Highlights
Beer is the most consumed alcoholic drink worldwide (Colen and Swinnen, 2016)
The objective of the Life-cycle assessment (LCA) study presented in this paper is to assess the potential environmental footprint of the processes involved in valorising barley straw with sCO2 technology, and to compare it with the environmental impact of the current barley straw treatment
The environmental impact categories that contributed the most to the overall environmental impact in the scenario with the UK electricity mix, i.e. human toxicity and freshwater ecotoxicity, are reduced by 91–93%, which means that the overall environmental impact of this alternative scenario must be significantly smaller than in the current scenario
Summary
Beer is the most consumed alcoholic drink worldwide (Colen and Swinnen, 2016). Breweries generate large quantities of waste materials per litre of beer produced, ranging from various types of solid wastes to liquid waste (WRAP, n.d.). Due to its increasing use and complexity, the LCA methodology has been standardised by the International Organization for Standardization, which divides LCA into four main phases: goal and scope, life-cycle inventory analysis (LCI), life-cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and life-cycle interpretation. Their following standards apply: ISO 14040:2006 and ISO 14044:2006. This paper applies the LCA methodology to study the environmental impact of managing one of the major waste streams in the supply chain of Molson Coors, a large brewery located in the UK. This paper, quantifies the potential environmental impact associated with the implementation of an alternative valorisation process to manage such waste from the beer supply chain
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