Abstract

This report is the written result from a study where the environmental effects and the resource consumption for apples of different origin has been followed to store in Gothenburg, Sweden. The study is made with a lifecycle perspective, e. g. the apples have been followed from the establishment of an orchard all the way until they are in the chosen store in Gothenburg. The functional unit of the study is 1 kg of apples in store in Gothenburg and the producers that have been studied are in France, Sweden and at New Zealand. These three systems have been chosen as they represent one typical overseasproducer (New Zealand), one typical mid-European producer (France) and domestic production. The study has been performed using conventional Life Cycle Assessment methodology originating from the standards in LCA-Nordic and SETAC. Apart from this the use of pesticides have been studied carefully under use of a Dutch model for riskassessment, USES 1.0. The report gives, apart from the actual results, also an exhaustive description of the systems studied, a description of the methodology used both for the pesticideassessment and the conventional Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). The results has been partitioned in two parts; first the results for the three LCA:s minus the use of pesticides, and second the results from the assessment of the pesticides used. According the first mentioned results it is obvious that the flow who has the greatest importance is the energy and that the energy mainly is consumed through the transports. The energy consumption for the New Zealand system is five to seven times as great as the Swedish and the French system requires a little bit less than three times the Swedish energy consumption. It is shown in the study that even if boat transport is energy efficient calculated per kilogramkilometer it doesn’t compensate for the extreme long distance transport from New Zealand to Sweden. The truck transport from France is also quit important for the energy consumption in, and the environmental load from, the French system. Thus the transport offers a great possibility to decrease the enviromnental load from the French and New Zealand systems, for example through using train transports from France, using cleaner fuels or more energy efficient ships for the transport from New Zealand. According to the use of pesticides in the studied systems it is shown that the results from the method used in this study for assessing the impact gives considerable different results than if the pesticide use is compared on the basis of active substance used. It is also shown that the Swedish growing system stands for the smallest environmental impact from the pesticide use in all three of the impact categories used for assessing the ecotoxicological impact. The New Zealand system has been showed to have less environmental impact than the French in two of the categories with very small difference in the third. The pesticides who stands for the greatest impact and therefore are the most important to take away or replace, have been identified for all the systems. A overall assessment of the results shows that the Swedish system, that has been studied, cause clearly less environmental load than the two others, both according to the total Life Cycle and the use of pesticides. The New Zealand growing appears to be a less burden for the environment than the French, but the other parts of the Life Cycle, especially the transports, gives a considerable greater load than the load from the French system. The methods that have been used have shown to be well suited for the purpose and especially interesting is the results from the assessment of the pesticides who have been achieved using the USES 1.0 model.

Keywords

äppelproduktion

Published in

Rapport - Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet, Institutionen för lantbruksteknik
1997,
Publisher: Institutionen för lantbruksteknik, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/125828