Compare 3 cheese packaging types using Life Cycle Assessment.

• Polypropylene box and cap
• Tin box and polyethylene cap
• Cardboard box and cap and polyethylene foil inside

The main environmental impacts come from the production. Distribution and waste disposal are negligible. The cardboard and polyethylene packaging type is the best solution, followed by the polypropylene one and the tin and the polyethylene type is the worst. The sensitivity analysis shows no great differences between the results obtained with one or another life cycle impact assessment methodology.

Packaging made mainly of cardboard are less impacting than packaging containing more plastics or metals. The LCIA methodology used does not change the final results obtained in this study.

The objective of this study is to quantify the influence of various good deeds on the total impacts of milk, yogurt and cheese.

The best action for retailers is to increase their energy efficiency. For the consumers the best good deed is to reduce the losses. Buying organic products lowers some of the impacts: it helps to decrease the GHG emissions and the energy use but it leads to an increase in the eutrophication potential. The households, i.e. the consumers, have the greatest improvement potential to decrease the impacts of the 3 products. The yogurt is the product that has the highest improvement potential.

The good deeds that decrease the losses are the most interesting for the 3 products because it decreases the quantities of milk produced at farm, which is the most impacting phase. The production of milk has a lower decrease potential because it is the less processed product (less losses possibilities) and the most efficient system of the 3 products studied.

The objective of this study is to compare conventional and organic milk farming in the Netherlands with a Life Cycle Assessment.

Organic milk has lower impacts when we consider energy use and eutrophication potential but a higher acidification potential and global warming potential than a conventional milk. The land use is higher for the organic milk than for the conventional. For conventional farming the concentrated feed production is contributing the most to all impact categories. For organic farming, the highest share of the impacts are due not only to concentrated feed but also to roughage production.

The concentrated feed production is the main contributor to most of the impacts. For this, lower the concentrates fraction in cow's diet could lower the impacts per kg of milk. The final results of this study are comparable and coherent with those of similar studies in other countries.

The impacts on the environment of milk production are mainly due to dairy cows feed and particularly to concentrated feed. The aim of this study is to compare two concentrated feeds scenarios: imported soybean meal from Brazil and rapesead meal produced in France, both destined to french dairy cows.

The soybean meal imported from Brazil has lower environmental impacts than the rapeseed meal made in France regarding all environmental impact category tested here, excepted for the photochemical oxidation. This is due to the higher use of chemical fertilizers and the lower yield of the rapeseed alternative. The higher environmental impacts of the rapeseed cultivation are not balanced by the transatlantic transport of soy meal. For each impact category, the contribution of crop production (rapeseed or soybean) and the maize silage (that is added to produce the meal) are the main contributors to the overall impacts of meals. The other ingredients necessary to the meals have lower impacts that are nearly negligibles.

Carbon sequestration in soil cultivated with soybean or rapeseed is also discussed.

The soybean meal scenario is more environmentally-efficient because it requires less agricultural inputs (fertilizer), generates lower in field direct emissions and reduces crop management operations. The advantages of soybean meal are mostly due to the fact that soybean is a legume crop. One interesting strategy would be to use leguminous protein crops grown in France but the legume that could be grown in France are not really usable for cow meal because of the nature of their protein.

The change of land use induced by the soybean or rapeseed cultivation are not accounted for in this study (for instance the fact that soybean cultivation extension in Brazil could influence deforestation).

The rapeseed cultivation could be improved with a decrease in synthetic fertilizer inputs, e.g. with the cultivation of rapeseed completely on the dairy farm, allowing the use of manure as fertilizers.

The sensitivity analysis made (on the allocation between oil and meal in the rapeseed and soybean meals productions, on the direct field emissions and on the location of rapeseed cultivation) does not influence the final results: imported soybean meal is les impacting than locally produced rapeseed meal.

The results of this study depend on the assumptions concerning system boundaries, allocation procedures and flow estimation methods. The results obtained cannot be extrapolated to other regions because of various local dependent variables (mainly gaseous and leaching losses in fields). In particular, they should not be generalized to all agricultural systems using soybean imported from Brazil.

The modellisation of the crushing plant to process soybean meal is based on a french plant but this process is performed in Brazil.

The fact that crop cultivation induces land use changes has not been taken in consideration in this study, although it may cause major environmental impacts, essentially in Brazil where expansion of soybean cultivation area can be synonymous of deforestation and loss of biodiversity.

This study focuses on the milk packaging (Tetra Pak). The aim is to show the influence of recycling rates on the environmental impact of the whole life cycle of milk packaging (Tetra Pak aseptic containers). This study evaluates the Global Warming Potential using the following recycling rates: 2%, 22%, 30%, 40% and 70%.

The GHG emitted are CH4, N2O, CO2, CO and CF4. The CH4 is mainly due to the production of cardboard and polyethylene and a small quantity is due to the anaerobic degradation of the containers in landfills. The CO2, CO and N2O are mainly emitted during the manufacturing of containers and transports. CF4 is related to the aluminium production.

Increasing the recycling rate leads to a decrease in the consumption of non-renewable energy. Two different recycling scenarios are studied. In the first one, only carboard is recovered and reused, in the second one, cardboard is recycled and the aluminium and polyethylene part is valuated as roof tiles. For the first recycling scenario, the principal contributor to the GHG emissions decrease is the decrease in virgin material use. The decrease in GHG emissions due to the less important volume landfilled (less methane emissions) is nearly negligible. In the second scenario, the maximum potential GHG emissions decrease is not much higher than in the first scenario. This is due to the composition of the containers: the cardboard mass is important (75%) regarding to the polyethylene and aluminium mass.

The GHG emissions can be reduced up to one half with a recycling rate of 70%. The decrease in GHG emissions is related to the re-incorporation of recycled material in the man-

ufacturing of cardboard (less important use of virgin materials), the less important non-renewable energy use and the decrease of waste volume (anaerobic conditions of landfilling are responsible of methane emissions).

The aim of this study is to establish environmental impact for two types of Japanese dairy farm using LCA. The first dairy farm uses crop rice silage to feed cows and the second one is a conventional dairy farm. The objective is to determine which dairy farm type has the lower environmental impacts.

The whole-crop rice silage system has a higher global warming potential but a smaller acidification potential, eutrophication potential than conventional system. It also consumes less energy.

The higher GHG emissions obtained for the whole-crop rice silage system is mainly due to rice production (that emits CH4). Some researches have put forward that a better management of water, organic matter and fertilizers can help to decrease CH4 emission from rice silage production. The smaller impact on acidification and eutrophication is due to the smaller quantity of chemical fertilizer used for rice silage production. The smaller amount of energy used for local silage is due to the fact that there is less transport phases. Even if there is not an important difference between the two systems studied, the overall environmental impact of the local rice silage is smaller that the conventional one. Three other advantages can be attributed to local silage even if they are not taken in account quantitatively in an LCA. The first one is that fields for rice production are already available. The second is that silage production can be modified to grain rice production in case of increase of food needs. Finally, the local rice silage uses more composted manure, thus it could be an interesting alternative (good material recycling rate) for regions where the animal production is important.