An approach to evaluate sustainability of a production process based on its lca and environment impact analysis: a case study on a food product

Abstract

Sustainability in simple words is “the ability to sustain”. Sustainability of manufacturing processes is a necessary prerequisite if we want to reduce their environmental impacts. Food consumption has a considerable environmental impact right from growing the food till it is consumed. Rapid increase in the population has led to increased food production thus increasing the impacts. Food production involves considerable energy inputs and resource inputs. Besides this, there is also a lot of food wastage as it moves through the supply chain that includes the manufacturing stages also. Thus it is necessary that as we increase the food production we should also make efforts to make the food production supply chains sustainable. Efforts should be made to optimize the energy and resource usage during the food production processes. Waste reduction is also very important. The present study selects a food product i.e. Kheer. It is a very popular milk based food item in the Indian cuisine. Besides milk the other main ingredients are rice and sugar. The commercial production of Kheer involves a considerable amount of energy usage, besides the use of packaging material as well as for its supply to the customers. An approach based on LCA and the energy, resource and waste (ERW) impacts has been developed to evaluate the sustainability of manufacturing processes. First of all, Life cycle assessment of the production process involved in the commercial production of kheer is carried out to assess their environmental impacts. The scope of LCA is from cradle-to-gate. Secondly, the energy inputs, resource inputs and waste being generated at the process level are taken into account for each of the constituent manufacturing processes. The energy impacts, resource impacts and waste impacts of each constituent process are shown on the energy impact map, resource impact map and waste impact map respectively.