Improving environmental performances in wine production by a life cycle assessment analysis

In the last years, the wine production industry had gradually focused its attention in the improvement of the product quality rather than quantity. This tendency generated an increase in the wine's price/litre, and, as a consequence, the entrance in the market of various small wine producers that developed new product trademarks of good qualities. The product quality obtained through better raw materials and more careful processes (with a semi-handcrafted quality) cannot be separated from an accurate evaluation of the environmental sustainability. Unfortunately, a higher number of small producers may generate greater emissions with respect to a small number of big industrial producers and, therefore, these small emerging productions have to be, even more so, studied. The aim of this paper is to deepen the environmental impacts and the energy efficiency of four kinds of wines made by a small producer in the southern part of Italy using a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis. Vinification, bottling, packaging, distribution and waste disposal treatments were taken into account in the performed analysis. Wines were produced using different processes and different raw materials, depending on the specific characteristics (high or medium quality) and kind (red or white). The materials and energy consumption and the emissions to air, soil and water were reported to the chosen functional unit (a bottle of Italian wine). The data were analysed using SimaPro 8.0.2 software and the Ecoinvent database, in accordance with the reference standard for LCA (i.e., ISO 14040-14044) to identify the environmental performance indicators of the IMPACT 2002+ methodology. Once evaluated the global environmental impact on all the categories, we focused our attention and we proposed an improved solution in terms of global warming potential (GWP). In particular, for the red high quality wine (that was the most environment affecting wine), carbon dioxide emissions lowered from 0.99 to 0.05 kg(CO2)/bottle. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.