Autor(es): Ramzy Kahhat Abedrabbo, Ian Vázquez Rowe y otros
En colaboración con la Universidad de Cantabria. Abstract: The great concern regarding food loss (FL) has been studied previously, but in an isolated way, disregarding interdependencies with other areas. This paper aims to go a step further by proposing a new procedure to assess different waste management alternatives based on the nexus approach by means of an integrated Water-Energy-Food-Climate Nexus Index (WEFCNI). The environmental profile of the waste management techniques is determined using Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) which, in combination with Linear Programming (LP), explores the optimal aggregation of weighting factors that lead to an aggregated nexus index. The management of residues from the anchovy canning industry in Cantabria (Spain) has been used as a case study, considering the three current applied alternatives: (i) valorisation of FL as animal feed in aquaculture (food waste-to-food approach), (ii) incineration of FL with energy recovery, and (iii) landfilling with biogas recovery. The last two considered the use of energy recovered to produce a new aquaculture product (food waste-to-energy-to-food scenarios). The results indicate that incineration is the best performing scenario when the nutritional energy provided by the valorisation alternative is not high enough and the valorisation technology presents the highest water consumption. Therefore, a minimisation in the consumption of natural resources is suggested in order to improve the application of circular economy within the sector. The use of the nexus index as an environmental management tool is extendable to any food system with the aim of facilitating the decision-making process in the development of more sustainable products.
Ir al enlaceAutor(es): Kurt Ziegler Rodríguez, Ian Vázquez Rowe, Ramzy Kahhat Abedrabbo y otros
Publicación correspondiente al Proyecto IKI PNUMA Abstract: Peru generated in 2014 a total of 7.5 million metric tons of municipal solid waste (MSW). Of these, 47 % of residues ended up in open dumpsites and only 21 % were sent to controlled landfills. Efforts must be made to conduct a change from open dumpsites to sanitary landfills, reaching an adequate and sustainable waste management system. This study aims at meeting this challenge by means of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. In particular, the objective of this study is to develop a life cycle model that will allow the estimation of environmental impacts linked to waste landfilling in Peru, and to compare in further studies alternatives to determine a more environmentally sustainable solution. The model is flexible in order to be adapted to the three main geo-climatic regions in Peru: the hyper-arid coast, the Andean Highlands and the Amazon Rainforest. The life cycle model was developed with the EASETECH software, taking into account the phases of construction, operation and end-of-life the Peruvian landfills. The main parameters of this model include waste composition and the characteristics and treatment of the leachate and landfill gas, taking into consideration local parameters such as temperature, humidity and precipitation intensity. The model lays the foundation stone to determine the main hotspots in Peruvian sanitary landfills. This information will allow achieving an adequate and sustainable waste management by proposing improvement measures to help stakeholders in the decision-making process.
Ir al enlaceAutor(es): Ian Vázquez Rowe y otros
Publicación correspondiente al Proyecto CERES Abstract: Feeding the world’s population sustainably is a major challenge of our society and has been stated as one of the key priorities for development cooperation by the EU policy framework on food security. However, the current pattern of natural resources exploitation to meet humanity’s demand for food threatens long-term food security. Food systems represent around 30 % of final energy use, generating up to 30 % of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Given the expected increase of global population (9 billion people by 2050) and the amount of food losses and waste generated (a third of global food production), improving the efficiency of food systems along the supply chain is essential to ensure food security. This work combines life cycle assessment (LCA) and data envelopment analysis (DEA) to assess the efficiency of Spanish agri-food system and propose improvement actions in order to reduce energy usage and GHG emissions. Results suggest that sweets and vegetable fats categories provide the largest nutritional energy to consumer per unit of embedded energy in its production. Around a 70 % average reduction target is estimated for the Spanish agri-food system to be efficient, with a similar reduction in related greenhouse gas emissions.
Ir al enlaceAutor(es): Pedro Villanueva con afiliación PELCAN
Fresh pasteurized milk consumption is evaluated from environmental and socio-economic perspectives. Two different supply chains are analysed: traditional supply chain and vending machines—a circular business model based on a short supply chain. Milk vending machines show that consuming milk in proximity, eliminating intermediaries between producers and consumers and, therefore, reducing the use of resources and energy (packaging and transportation), has environmental advantages. Hence, milk distribution, electricity consumption and consumer transport caused the largest impacts. When the environmental profiles of pasteurized milk consumption in supermarkets and vending machines are benchmarked, the vending machine has a considerable lower impact. The sensitivity analysis emphasizes the latter findings, highlighting the relevance of consumer choices upon the environmental profile of milk consumption. Despite the environmental benefits, vending supply chain unexpectedly failed in Spain from a socioeconomic point of view due to several factors: the farmers’ lack of processing and marketing capacities, the difficulty of networking and collaboration with other key stakeholders, the necessity to raise consumer awareness of the benefits of pasteurized milk and the limited range of dairy products offered. The development of a close short supply chain can bring significant environmental and socio-economic benefits. Notwithstanding, the case analysed in this paper indicates that the isolated entrepreneurship is not sufficient and the transformation of the food system towards a circular model requires political and societal commitment.
Ir al enlaceAutor(es): Eduardo Cancino Espinoza, Ian Vázquez Rowe, Isabel Quispe Trinidad
Quinoa is a plant that is cultivated in the Andean highlands across Peru and Bolivia. It is increasingly popular due to its high nutritive value and protein content. In particular, the cultivation of organic quinoa has grown substantially in recent years since it is the most demanded type of quinoa in the foreign market. Nevertheless, despite the interest that quinoa has generated in terms of its nutritional properties, little is known regarding the environmental profile of its production and processing. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to analyze the environmental impacts that are linked to the production and distribution of organic quinoa to the main export destinations through the application of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. An attributional LCA perspective was conducted including data from approximately 55 ha of land used for quinoa production in the regions of Huancavelica and Ayacucho, in southern-central Peru. IPCC, 2013 and ReCiPe 2008 were the two assessment methods selected to estimate the environmental impact results using the SimaPro 8.3 software. Results, which were calculated for one 500 g package of organic quinoa, showed that GHG emissions are in the upper range of other organic agricultural products. However, when compared to other high protein content food products, especially those from animal origin, considerably low environmental impacts are obtained. For instance, if 20% of the average annual beef consumption in Peru is substituted by organic quinoa, each Peruvian would mitigate 31 kg CO2eq/year in their diet. Moreover, when the edible protein energy return on investment (i.e., ep-EROI) is computed, a ratio of 0.38 is obtained, in the higher range of protein rich food products. However, future research should delve into the environmental and food policy implications of agricultural land expansion to produce an increasing amount of quinoa for a growing global demand.
Ir al enlaceAutor(es): Ian Vázquez Rowe y otros
Descargar publicación (351,84 KB)Autor(es): José Alejandro Bazán Andía
Asesor: Ian Vázquez
Tesis de Maestría
Resumen:
Las actividades que se desarrollan en las ciudades dinamizan la economía global; no obstante, estos procesos urbanos son, actualmente, intensivos en emisión de gases de efecto invernadero (GEI). Es de interés mundial reducir estas emisiones con la transición a sistemas de bajo consumo de carbono. Para ello, se implementa, en los subsistemas urbanos, tecnologías de captación de recursos endógenos donde se aborda el nexo energía – agua – alimento. El estudio posee dos objetivos: (i) determinar el grado de autosuficiencia energética, hídrica y alimentaria para afianzar la seguridad respectiva; (ii) cuantificar la reducción de GEI respecto del contexto actual. Asimismo, la investigación se sustenta en: (a) prevenir la discontinuidad del suministro y reducir la dependencia de fuentes externas; (b) el cumplimiento del compromiso medioambiental del Acuerdo de París, Convención Marco de las Naciones Unidas sobre el Cambio Climático (2016). Para el análisis, se han seleccionado tres ciudades por cada región geográfica de Perú: Ica, Ayacucho y Pucallpa; cada una con una climatología, morfología urbana y un mix eléctrico regional particular. Estas ciudades son representativas porque se encuentran en las regiones climatológicas donde se concentra la mayor parte de la población nacional. Por ello, éstas se han caracterizado en demanda y oferta con datos de energía solar incidente, temperatura, pluviometría y consumo de agua, electricidad y alimentos. Posteriormente, a partir del plano urbano, ArcGis 10.3 cuantifica la superficie de cubierta disponible. Como último paso para obtener el potencial real, se aplican una serie de factores de corrección por área y eficiencia. Los resultados indican que los recursos endógenos permiten satisfacer la demanda; específicamente, en energía. Asimismo, el análisis ambiental con el método IPCC 2013 en Simapro v8.2 evidencia una importante reducción de emisiones de GEI, la cual varía en cada ciudad según el mix eléctrico particular con el que es comparado. Finalmente, a través del análisis de sensibilidad, se determina valores ideales que ciertos parámetros de crecimiento urbano deben mantener para afianzar la seguridad entre el nexo urbano descrito y la sostenibilidad ambiental.
Autor(es): Ian Vázquez Rowe y otros
Life Cycle Assessment and Data Envelopment Analysis have been repeatedly combined in the literature as LCA+DEA method with the aim of enhancing the utility of life-cycle based methods in order to account for eco-efficiency verification and environmental impact minimization. Despite its evolution through time, it lacks specific standards that norm the combination of the two methods. In this sense, this study noted that its development has evolved in the frame of mainstream cultural perspectives to measure environmental impacts (i.e., hierarchist approaches). Therefore, the main objective of the study is to compare the benchmarking results obtained through DEA computation using different Cultural Theory approaches to calculate environmental impacts. For this, a case study for the Cantabrian purse seining fishing fleet was chosen. Hence, three different DEA matrices were constructed attending to the three main human visions on environmental issues: hierarchist, individualist and egalitarian. All three matrices represented the same set of inputs to be optimized, but differed in the nature of the output flow, representing landed fish, energy content or biomass removal. Results suggest that optimization of environmental impacts is strongly influenced by the cultural perspective selected. In the particular case of fishing fleets, benchmarking environmental impacts based on anthropocentric views may be ignoring the health of fishing stocks and the trophic complexity of the ecosystems. Methodological conclusions are directed towards the need to define more flexible and holistic frameworks in LCA+DEA modelling with the aim of enrichening the set of predetermined assumptions, including the Cultural Theory, to avoid biased interpretations.
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