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Study: environmental impact analysis of the tomato processing industry

04/10/2024

François-Xavier Branthôme
Italy,
WPTC
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Study: Increasing sustainability in the tomato processing industry: environmental impact analysis and future development scenarios
“The production of 1 kg of peeled tomatoes and tomato puree leads to greenhouse gas emissions of 0.083 kg CO2 eq and 0.135 kg CO2 eq”.
 
The agri-food sector has been identified as one of the most significant contributors to environmental degradation and emissions. Thus, in order to respond to the societal demand for cleaner and greener products, in recent years, the food industry has been striving to identify and apply more sustainable practices to minimize the negative impact on the environment. 
 
 Within the agri-food sector, one of the industries requiring efforts to mitigate its environmental footprint is the tomato processing industry, which represents an important industry within the Italian industrial food processing sector. Efficient utilization of resources and adoption of innovative methods in the production lines of the tomato processing industry can be envisaged as strategic measures to increase sustainability. This study aims to discuss the results of the case study in which an Italian tomato processing company has been analyzed by applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology.
 
The study demonstrates that the production of 1 kg of peeled tomatoes and tomato puree leads to greenhouse gas emissions of 0.083 kg CO2 eq and 0.135 kg CO2 eq, respectively. A deeper analysis to evaluate the contribution of the different tomato processing stages indicated that the thermal units are the main ones responsible for adverse effects on the environment, and any improvement in their performance can be seen as an unmissable opportunity. 
 
The conservation strategies identified resulted in considerable water (23.4%), electricity (14.7%), and methane (28.7%) savings and, consequently, in 16% and 19% reduction of global warming potential in peeled tomato and tomato puree production lines, respectively. These findings provide new insights for tomato processing companies wishing to adopt more sustainable processing practices, reducing their environmental impact to a considerable extent and improving their economic performance.
 
 
Conclusion
European sustainable production and consumption policies consider that agri-food has a top priority over other industrial sectors. Efficient resource utilization and adoption of innovative methods play a crucial role in mitigating the environmental impact and increasing the sustainability of the food industry. To enhance suitability in the tomato processing industry, an in-depth quantitative LCA analysis with a “gate to gate” approach was carried out, considering only the processing phases of peeled tomato and tomato puree production. The results of this study showed that to produce 1 kg of peeled tomato and 1 kg of tomato puree, the juice preparation in peeled tomato production and the concentration unit in tomato puree production have the highest contribution to global warming. In pursuit of advancing sustainability within the tomato processing sector, the development scenarios, defined through water-energy nexus simulation, reveal that the implementation of the conventional conservation measures identified in this study in the production lines of peeled tomato and tomato puree resulted in water, electrical energy, and methane significant savings, and consequently, environmental impact reduction in all categories subsequently led to tomato processing industry which is more sustainable. 
 
Some of these conservation measures can be easily applied in the processing plant analyzed in this study, being financially viable. For instance, the installation of insulation on water and steam pipelines is feasible. However, the most sustainable solution can be selected only if an assessment of the alternatives is carried out, considering Design for the Environment (DfE) methods in combination with Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Cost (LCC) for an economic evaluation.
 
However, to improve the accuracy and reliability of the LCA results, it will be necessary to conduct an extensive and accurate inputs and outputs data collection throughout the processing stages of peeled tomato and tomato puree production and carry out the analysis of uncertainties. This will provide a more complete picture of the environmental impacts associated with each stage. In view of improving the sustainability of the tomato processing industry, exploring the effect of introducing innovations, also through novel technologies, can be considered as an important further step along with the evaluation of social and economic life cycle assessments.
 
Some complementary data
Reference: Eslami E, Abdurrahman E, Pataro G and Ferrari G (2024) Increasing sustainability in the tomato processing industry: environmental impact analysis and future development scenarios. Front. Sustain. Food Syst. 8:1400274. doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2024.1400274
 
Method: Foreground data were obtained from the tomato processing facility located in southern Italy, and Ecoinvent database was the source of background data. The assessment was carried out by SimaPro software using ReCiPe 2016 (V1.03). The feasible conservation strategies in the production line have been evaluated through water-energy nexus simulation by SuperPro Designer® before the implementation, and different scenarios have been evaluated by SimaPro to decrease the environmental load.
 
Source: frontiersin.org