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Item type:Publication, Application of the “Distance to Target” Approach to the Multiobjective Optimization of Nutritional and Economic Costs due to Food Loss and Waste(Elsevier, 2020-01-01)Since about one third of all food produced worldwide is lost or wasted throughout the supply chain, measures to reduce food loss and waste (FLW) must be fostered to meet the increasing challenge of sustainable feeding of the world's population. In addition to the minimization of the total amount of FLW, two additional relevant aspects must be taken into account: the nutritional and economic costs caused by these losses. This point of view defines a more complex scenario with multiple sustainability targets, with different minimization objectives. A “distance to target” approach, based on the definition of a normalized weighted distance, has been selected to provide practical and effective optimization guidelines by measuring the magnitude towards the quantitative sustainable targets in the minimization of economic and nutritional costs associated to FLW. The results revealed that vegetables were the food category that showed the worst performance in terms of nutritional and economic costs due to the great amount of loss and waste generated, which highlights the importance of providing measures in this category.1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Peruvian efforts to contain COVID-19 fail to protect vulnerable population groups(Elsevier, 2020-11-01)Peru is arguably providing a robust governmental response in the initial stages of the COVID-19 outbreak, with early lockdown measures and the implementation of relatively ambitious economic safety nets to protect families and enterprises. Despite this initial optimism, structural deficiencies in the public health system, high informality in the labor market, the new wave of migrants from Venezuela and the extremely diverse cultural characteristics of many areas exacerbate the number of potentially highly vulnerable groups that may be left out of these safety nets unless additional efforts are enforced to improve social coverage. In this discussion we aim to identify some of these groups, highlighting the main challenges they face during the outbreak and proposing certain mitigation measures to balance the social policy response. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Environmental impact assessment of beef cattle production in semi-intensive systems in Paraguay(Elsevier, 2020-11-11)Beef production has notable environmental implications on a global scale. Paraguayan beef cattle farming is characterized by being developed mostly in pastures or grasslands, but recently the practice of finishing confined to feedlots has thrived. In this context, the aim of this study was to understand the environmental performance of a semi-intensive beef farm which involved in its production system both a pasture and a feedlot stage. A Life Cycle Assessment was carried out with a “cradle-to-farm gate” perspective and 1 kg of Live Weight as the functional unit. Primary data referring to cropping and livestock systems’ inputs and outputs were collected on site and a wide range of impact categories were evaluated. Beef cattle farming proved to be responsible for intensive greenhouse gas emissions (22.0 ± 3.9 kg CO2 eq ⋅ kg LW−1), especially when it occurs predominantly on pasture. The breeding phase is the one that weighs most on global warming potential within the rearing cycle. Since most animals are present in the pasture stage, this contributed highly to the impact categories influenced by animal-related emissions. The feedlot stage, despite its limited duration with respect to the overall rearing cycle, weighs significantly in the categories related to non-methane volatile organic compounds emissions, toxicity, land occupation and fuel consumption, especially because of feed production (both on- and off-farm). Moreover, this stage takes on a greater environmental load when considering the impacts of land use changes related to the consumption of purchased feed, even though its short duration reduces the relative variation given by land use changes inclusion. Some possible mitigation solutions were identified in the discussion, but further study is required into the implications of this topic and the exploration of different scenarios.1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Multi-objective optimization of nutritional, environmental and economic aspects of diets applied to the Spanish context(MDPI, 2020-11-01)Current food consumption patterns must be revised in order to improve their sustainability. The nutritional, environmental, and economic consequences of these dietary patterns must be taken into consideration when diet guidelines are proposed. This study applied a systematic optimization methodology to define sustainable dietary patterns complying with nutritional, environmental, and economic issues. The methodology was based on a multi-objective optimization model that considered a distance-to-target approach. Although the three simultaneous objectives (maximal nutritional contribution, minimal greenhouse gas emissions, and minimal costs) could be divergent, the proposed model identified the optimal intake of each food product to achieve the maximal level of nutritional, environmental, and economic diets. This model was applied to six different eating patterns within the Spanish context: one based on current food consumption and five alternative diets. The results revealed that dietary patterns with improved nutritional profiles and reduced environmental impacts could be defined without additional costs just by increasing the consumption of vegetables, fruits, and legumes, while reducing the intake of meat and fish. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Regionalized strategies for food loss and waste management in Spain under a life cycle thinking approach(MDPI, 2020-12-01)Food loss and waste (FLW) has become a central concern in the social and political debate. Simultaneously, using FLW as a bioenergy source could significantly contribute to closing the carbon cycle by reintroducing energy into the food supply chain. This study aims to identify best strategies for FLW management in each of the 17 regions in Spain, through the application of a Life Cycle Assessment. To this end, an evaluation of the environmental performance over time between 2015 and 2040 of five different FLW management scenarios implemented in a framework of (i) compliance and (ii) non-compliance with the targets of the Paris Agreement was performed. Results revealed savings in the consumption of abiotic resources in those regions in which thermal treatment has a strong presence, although their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in a scenario of compliance with climate change targets are higher. In contrast, scenarios that include anaerobic digestion and, to a lesser extent those applying aerobic composting, present lower impacts, including climate change, suggesting improvements of 20–60% in non-compliance and 20–80% in compliance with Paris Agreement targets, compared to the current scenarios. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Reviewing environmental life cycle impacts of biobased polymers: current trends and methodological challenges(Springer, 2020-11-01)Purpose: The aim of this review is to evaluate previous life cycle assessment (LCA) studies of first- and second-generation bioplastics, to understand the state of the art and the main problems addressed during the development of new bioplastics. Furthermore, it provides an overview on land use change (LUC) impacts accounted for, methodologies chosen, and the results obtained. Methods: Studies related to the impact assessment of bioplastics and published between 2007 and 2018 were gathered. Five keyword strings were used to perform a wide search and select relevant LCA studies. The study aimed to analyze critical methodological aspects in LCA, in order to determine the most common choices made during biobased material analyses, as well as major limitations. Three filters were applied to select comparable studies, ending with a final number of 17 papers. Recommendations were obtained by comparing common practices performed by different authors with suggested best available practices mentioned in handbooks and guidelines. Interestingly, LUC metrics and impacts were, most of the time, neglected. Thus, a specific assessment and discussion was performed regarding the methods used to quantify LUC impacts, considering its importance during the production of biobased materials. Results and discussion: The study discussed the main environmental problems linked to the development of new biomaterials. LCA of agricultural products or systems, when compared with fossil-based counterparts, is expected to show higher environmental impacts in categories directly affected by fertilizer use, occupied and transformed land, among others. Thus, studies that included additional impact categories besides global warming (e.g., eutrophication or acidification) concluded that biobased materials present higher impacts, recommending improvements in farming practices to improve their overall environmental profile. Moreover, this review gathered methodologies used to account for LUC impacts and the results obtained. The main constraint of including LUC impacts was the lack of a standardized methodology, as well as large uncertainties in existing methodologies. Conclusions: Most studies concluded that improvements in farming practices might reduce the attributed environmental impacts with the reduction of the amount of land, fertilizer, pesticides, and water used. Studies computing LUC impacts agreed on the importance of including these impacts and concluded that greenhouse gas emissions of bioplastic production would increase, but in most cases would still be lower than the impact of their fossil-based counterparts. However, challenges remain when computing LUC impacts that need to be tackled when working with the available methodologies, including the collection of reliable inventory data (site-specific or regional data) and regionalized characterization factors.2 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Carbon footprint of anaerobic digestion combined with ultrasonic post-treatment of agro-industrial organic residues(Elsevier, 2020-10-26)Anaerobic digestion (AD) of organic waste, although widely practiced, may require suitable accompanying treatments to enhance the degradability of complex materials. Since these may require significant efforts in terms of energy and chemical demand, careful assessment of their overall environmental sustainability is mandatory to evaluate their full-scale feasibility. The study aims to represent the environmental profile of ultrasonication (US) applied as a post-treatment of anaerobic digestion of agro-industrial organic residues. There is an interest in the US treatment for the processing of complex organic materials prior to AD in order to enhance the hydrolysis of complex organic substrates and increase the biogas yield of the biological process. An attributional, process-based life cycle assessment (LCA) study was applied to quantify and compare the potential environmental impacts of an AD plant, the biogas utilization options as well as the different digestate processing alternatives grouped into a set of 16 scenarios. Based on the results, upgrading of biogas and bio-methane use as vehicle fuel instead of energy generation from CHP or fuel cell was recommended due to the lower impact on GWP. Similarly, composting was a suitable option to reduce environmental impacts compared to belt drying. From the uncertainty analysis, AD without US as post-treatment proves to be more sustainable in terms of GWP compared to when US is used, showing net savings in GHG emissions especially when upgrading of biogas is applied. The analysis provides useful indications to policy makers to define sustainable management alternatives for organic residues as well as identify the environmental advantages associated with biogas utilization and digestate treatment and disposal alternatives.1 - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
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Item type:Publication, Life cycle assessment of bagasse fiber reinforced biocomposites(Elsevier, 2020-06-10)This study aims to evaluate the life cycle environmental implications of producing fiber-reinforced biocomposite pellets, compared with sugarcane- and petroleum-based polyethylene (PE) pellets. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is used to evaluate the production of four types of pellets. LCA allows the evaluation of the benefits of improving the production of biobased materials by replacing part of the sugarcane bioPE with bagasse fibers. The functional unit selected was the production of 1 kg of plastic pellets. Primary data were collected from laboratory tests designed to obtain pulp fibers from bagasse and mix them with sugarcane bioPE. Two processes were studied to obtain fibers from bagasse: soda fractionation and hot water-soda fractionation. The results from the LCA show environmental improvements when reducing the amount of bioPE by replacing it with bagasse fibers in the categories of global warming, ozone formation, terrestrial acidification and fossil resource scarcity, when comparing to 100% sugarcane bioPE, and a reduction in global warming and fossil resource scarcity when compared to fossil-based PE. In contrast, results also indicate that there could be higher impacts in terms of ozone formation, freshwater eutrophication, and terrestrial acidification. Even though biocomposites result as a preferred option to bioPE, several challenges need to be overcome before a final recommendation is placed. The sensitivity analysis showed the importance of the energy source on the impacts of the processing of fibers. Thus, using clean energy to produce biobased materials may reduce the impacts related to the production stage. These results are intended to increase the attention of the revalorization of these residues and their application to generate more advanced materials. Further outlook should also consider a deeper evaluation of the impacts during the production of a plastic object and possible effects of the biobased materials during final disposal. - Some of the metrics are blocked by yourconsent settings
Item type:Publication, Environmental impacts of introducing cable cars in the Andean landscape: A case study for Kuelap, Peru(Elsevier, 2020-05-20)Cable cars have slowly become a popular means of transport beyond their classical use at ski resorts. In Latin America their use has thrived to access archaeological sites in the Andes, but also in urban environments for mass transit. Despite some apparent benefits of these systems, the current literature is scarce in terms of quantifying the environmental profile of cable cars. Hence, their environmental performance as compared to other means of transport remains essentially unexplored. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to provide a comparative environmental analysis, using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology, of the two existing transport methods to visit the Kuelap Archaeological Complex, in northern Peru: a recently built cableway system and the alternative unpaved winding road. An attributional LCA perspective was performed for several impact categories, including global warming and particulate matter formation. In addition, a scenario analysis and an uncertainty analysis, using Monte Carlo simulation, were conducted to account for deterministic and stochastic results interpretation. Results demonstrated that succulent environmental benefits are attained when cable cars substitute road transport in complex Andean orographic conditions. However, the rebound effects of reducing traveling times significantly, as well as social and biodiversity aspects, should be analyzed in further depth to complement the environmental analysis.