Life cycle assessment of cane sugar production: The environmental contribution to human health, climate change, ecosystem quality and resources in México

Abstract

The cane sugar industry in Mexico depends heavily on the supply of energy, fossil fuels and material resources for its proper operation. The overuse of these resources plus the technical and technological deficiency causes severe environmental consequences. This scientific work aims to analyze the environmental damage attributable to cane sugar production following the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology. System boundaries include sugarcane growing and harvesting, sugarcane transportation, sugar milling and electricity cogeneration from bagasse. The associated emissions were acquired from the SimaPro-Ecoinvent database, the Roundtable on Sustainable Biofuels (RSB) and the Agroscope Reckenholz-Tänikon Research Station (ART). The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) was carried out by SimaPro 8.3.0 software and the characterization method used was IMPACT 2002+. The results show that sugarcane growing and harvesting stage provides the most harmful environmental impacts (52%) followed by electricity cogeneration (25.7%), sugarcane transportation (12.1%) and finally, sugar milling (10.2%). Regarding the environmental contributions at the endpoint categories, the highest percentage of impacts is found in the Human health category (53%), followed by Climate change (21%), Ecosystem quality (16%) and Resources (10%). The LCA in cane sugar production can support the decision-making process to deal with this environmental problem.

Keywords:

• life cycle assessment
• life cycle impact assessment
• life cycle inventory
• sugarcane
• sugar industry

Acknowledgments

We thank all the managers and specialists of the sugar mill for providing adequate information on sugarcane agriculture and cane sugar production. Our thanks also to the professor-researchers of the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatan (UADY) for the time dedicated, for the international data provided and for the support with the use of SimaPro software. Our thanks also to the researchers of the Tecnológico Nacional de México/I.T. Orizaba and CONACYT.