Consumer Footprint. Basket of Products indicator on Food

The EU Consumer Footprint aims at assessing the potential environmental impacts due to consumption. The calculation of the Consumer footprint is based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) of representative products (or services) purchased and used in one year by an EU citizen. This report is about the subset indicator of the basket of product (BoP) on food. The BoP food is built to assess the impact associated to food consumption in Europe from raw material extraction to end of life. The reference flow is the amount of food consumed by an average citizen in a reference year. It consists of a process-based life cycle inventory model for a basket of products that represent the most relevant food product groups, selected by importance in mass and economic value. The 19 products in the basket are: pork, beef and poultry meat, milk, cheese, butter, bread, sugar, sunflower oil, olive oil, potatoes, oranges, apples, mineral water, roasted coffee, beer, pre-prepared meals, wine, and pasta. The consumer footprint for the BoP food is assessed using 15 environmental impact categories as for the ILCD LCIA method and running a sensitivity for a number of impact categories with updated models. Results show that agriculture is the life cycle stage of the food system with the larger contribution to most of the impact categories. The product groups that emerge as hotspots in most of the impact categories are meat products, dairy products, and beverages. The main impact for the life cycle of meat products comes from the emissions due to agricultural activities for the production of feed. Direct emissions from animal husbandry (methane, dinitrogen oxide, ammonia, etc.) contribute as well. Normalized results show that the BoP food contributes significantly to several impact categories, with a different ranking depending upon the adopted normalisation reference (European or global). Ecotoxicity, human toxicity, eutrophication, acidification, water depletion and climate change are among the leading impacts. Since many LCA study on food are limited to the assessment of climate change related emissions, the BoP food baseline aims at helping to understand the wider array of impacts associated to the food system of production and consumption. Moreover, the Consumer Footprint BoP food baseline has been assessed against 5 scenarios, referring to improvement options related to the main drivers of impact. In fact, the scenarios act on the hotspots identified within the baseline and refer to the most relevant eco-innovations and behavioural changes identified through a review of the scientific literature. Scenario 1 and Scenario 4 act on the nutrients cycle, with the aim of recovering nutrients either at the production stage or the end of life stage. Scenario 2 acts at the end of life stage as well, by assuming an improvement of the efficiency of the waste water treatment in Europe. Scenario 3 is a first attempt to address the benefits of behavioural changes, with an example of reduced amount of meat consumed. Scenario 5 regards the topic of food waste prevention, and entails a number of prevention measures, acting at different stages of the food supply chain, including the use phase. The scenarios tested on the baseline of the BoP food provided insights on the potential for reducing environmental impacts of food consumption in Europe. Each scenario acts on a different component of the BoP (in term of either products, life cycle stages or composition of the basket). As the scenarios are different in type it was found out that the was a large difference on the different scores and savings among the investigated impact categories. In general, among the scenarios assessed, the options that allow for a higher reduction of impacts are the ones acting on the drivers of freshwater eutrophication, such as recovery of nutrients from urine or improvement of the wastewater treatment. It is important to highlight that results of scenarios shall be analysed considering a certain “uptake factor” across EU (it is not realistic to assume 100% change across EU27). It is also recommended to consider the combination of improvement actions, to cover a wider range of impacts and to maximize the potential of impact reduction, both at the scale of the single citizen and of the whole Europe. An example has been provided in the case of combined actions for the scenario on food waste prevention.JRC.D.1-Bio-econom

Evaluation of environmental impacts in the catering sector: the case of pasta

n/

Evidence of mud diapirism and coral colonies in the ionian sea (central mediterranean) from high resolution chirp sonar survey

A chirp sonar survey in the Ionian Sea investigated the Calabrian margin, the Calabrian accretionary wedge, the Taranto Trench and the Apulian foreland. Shallow tectonics structures have been related to deeper ones, recognised on CROP seismic profiles. The identified echo characters have been compared with those described in the modern literature and have been related to different kinds of sediments, on the basis of core samples. Based on echo character and morphology we have recognised: 1) A widespread presence of mounds, up to 50 m high, occurring on the Apulian plateau as isolated mounds in the deepest zones (1600-800 m) and in groups in the shallower ones (800-600 m); they have been interpreted as coral mounds, according to a recent discovery of living deep water coral colonies in this zone. 2) Some mud diapirs, isolated or in groups of two or three elements, widespread in the whole study area. In analogy of what has been observed on the Mediterranean Ridge, their presence suggests the activity of deep tectonic structures (thrusts and faults) and a reduced thickness (or absence) of Messinian evaporites in this part of the Ionian Sea

Energy analysis to assess the environmental sustainability of the dairy chain

In the 1990s, attention was focused on saving energy and water with the aim of reducing production costs. Since the turn of this century, problems relating to the management of greenhouse gases have gradually assumed greater importance. Research has highlighted the problems that may arise regarding energy consumption in an Italian dairy chain. Using life-cycle assessment methods, the main steps along the production chain have been identified: breeding, dairy, and food store (FS). Our analysis shows that the different issues involved are often not easily reconcilable. Energy data need to undergo a careful and specific normalization process when dealing with specific data on different parameters (kWh/tmilk, kWh/tmilk processed, kWh/m2store). This study examined a variety of production cases (2 farms, 2 dairies, and 2 FSs) located in Lombardy, northern Italy, and electric and thermal energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions were evaluated. A total of 2.8 kgCO2/kgcheese carbon dioxide emissions relating to the production process were recorded (39% breeding, 40% dairy, 1% FS). Further studies are needed in order to provide consumers with more precise and correct information (carbon labeling or green label). This may become an important element in consumer choice

Gastric duplication presenting as partial gastric outlet obstruction

Abstract We present a very rare case of gastric duplication treated with complete excision with two surgical procedures. We decided to report our case to share our experience that confirm the difficult of preoperative/intraoperative diagnosis of gastric duplication in a pediatric patient. Finally we reviewed the literature to date

Antioxidant and Anti-Inflammatory Effect of Cinnamon (Cinnamomum verum J. Presl) Bark Extract after In Vitro Digestion Simulation

Cinnamon bark is widely used for its organoleptic features in the food context and growing evidence supports its beneficial effect on human health. The market offers an increasingly wide range of food products and supplements enriched with cinnamon extracts which are eliciting beneficial and health-promoting properties. Specifically, the extract of Cinnamomum spp. is rich in antioxidant, anti-inflammatory and anticancer biomolecules. These include widely reported cinnamic acid and some phenolic compounds, such asproanthocyanidins A and B, and kaempferol. These molecules are sensitive to physical-chemical properties (such as pH and temperature) and biological agents that act during gastric digestion, which could impair molecules' bioactivity. Therefore, in this study, the cinnamon's antioxidant and anti-inflammatory bioactivity after simulated digestion was evaluated by analyzing the chemical profile of the pure extract and digested one, as well as the cellular effect in vitro models, such as Caco2 and intestinal barrier. The results showed that the digestive process reduces the total content of polyphenols, especially tannins, while preserving other bioactive compounds such as cinnamic acid. At the functional level, the digested extract maintains an antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect at the cellular level

Sea urchin chronicles. The effect of oxygen super-saturation and marine polluted sediments from Bagnoli-Coroglio Bay on different life stages of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus

In marinas and harbours, the accumulation of pollutants in sediments, combined with poor exchange of water with the open sea, poses a major environmental threat. The presence of photosynthetic organisms and the related oxygen production, however, may alleviate the negative effects of environmental contamination on heterotrophic organisms, enhancing their physiological defences. Furthermore, possible transgenerational buffer effects may increase the ability of natural populations to face environmental stress. Here we tested the occurrence of transgenerational effects on larvae of the sea urchin Paracentrotus lividus, whose parents were exposed, during the gametogenesis, to contaminated sediments subject to two temporal patterns of water re-suspension events and normal- (90%) vs. super-saturated (200%) levels of O2. The study site was Bagnoli-Coroglio (Gulf of Naples, southern Tyrrhenian Sea), a historically polluted brownfield and Site of National Interest for which environmental restoration options are currently under exploration. Larvae from different adult populations were significantly, although not linearly, affected by the interaction of all factors to which parents were exposed, at both 24h and 48h post fertilization. Specifically, the exposure of larvae to elutriates from contaminated sediments determined a developmental delay, a reduction in size and an increased percentage of abnormalities in all larval populations independently of their parental exposure. On the contrary, larvae from parents exposed to contaminated sediments, when reared in clean filtered sea water, succeeded in developing until the echinopluteus stage after 48h, with size and abundance comparable to those of larvae from control parents. Pre-exposure of parents to contaminated sediments did not successfully buffer the negative effects of elutriates on their offspring, and no positive effects of ‘super-saturated’ levels of O2 in response to contaminants were observed, suggesting that the Bagnoli-Coroglio area is currently not suitable for the re-stocking or re-introduction of this species

The value of manure - Manure as co-product in life cycle assessment

Research ArticleLivestock production is important for food security, nutrition, and landscape maintenance, but it is associated with several environmental impacts. To assess the risk and benefits arising from livestock production, transparent and robust indicators are required, such as those offered by life cycle assessment. A central question in such approaches is how environmental burden is allocated to livestock products and to manure that is re-used for agricultural production. To incentivize sustainable use of manure, it should be considered as a co-product as long as it is not disposed of, or wasted, or applied in excess of crop nutrient needs, in which case it should be treated as a waste. This paper proposes a theoretical approach to define nutrient requirements based on nutrient response curves to economic and physical optima and a pragmatic approach based on crop nutrient yield adjusted for nutrient losses to atmosphere and water. Allocation of environmental burden to manure and other livestock products is then based on the nutrient value from manure for crop production using the price of fertilizer nutrients. We illustrate and discuss the proposed method with two case studiesinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Pellet Production from Miscanthus: Energy and Environmental Assessment

The production of wood pellets has grown considerably in the last decades. Besides woody biomass, other feedstocks can be used for pellet production. Among these, miscanthus presents some advantages because, even if specifically cultivated, it requires low inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides and shows high biomass yield (up to 28 tons of dry matter ha−1 in Europe). Even if in the last years some studies evaluated the environmental impact of woody pellet production, there is no information about the environmental performances of miscanthus pellet production. In this study, the environmental impact of miscanthus pellet was evaluated using the Life Cycle Assessment approach with a cradle-to plant gate perspective. Primary data were collected in a small-medium size pelletizing plant located in Northern Italy where miscanthus is cultivated to be directly processed. The results highlight how the miscanthus pellet shows lower environmental impact compared to woody pellet, mainly due to the lower energy consumption during pelletizing. The possibility to pelletize the miscanthus biomass without any drying offsets the environmental impact related to the miscanthus cultivation for all the evaluated impact categories (except for Marine eutrophication). In detail, for global warming potential, 1 ton of miscanthus pellet shows an impact of 121.6 kg CO2 eq. (about 8% lower respect to woody pellet) while for the other evaluated impact categories the impact reduction ranges from 4 to 59%. Harvesting, which unlike the other field operations is carried out every year, is by far the main contributor to the impacts of the cultivation phase while electricity is the main contributor to the pelletizing phase