Carbon footprint of “pasteurized liquid milk” life cycle

In the last years there has been an increasing of global demand for dairy products particularly in developing regions, despite bovine milk production being criticized for its environmental impact such as greenhouse gas emission. To assess the environmental impact of a product it is crucial to consider the entire product chain, for this purpose Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a valuable tool, it allows to quantify the environmental burden of a product and to identify areas where the largest potential improvements can be made. In Europe dairy products contribute to 5% of global greenhouse gas emission for that reason in the last years the dairy industry has been extensively studied to determine its environmental impact. Italy is the 5th European milk producer but at the moment only few studies investigated the sustainability of Italian dairy sector. The aim of this work was to quantify the carbon footprint of the whole life cycle of 1 kg of pasteurized milk and to identify the environmental hot-spots of the process. A “cradle to grave” LCA was performed involving in the study a sample of 13 dairy farms and 2 dairies. Data were collected with personal interviews to the farmers or provided by the dairy companies, greenhouse gas emissions were estimated for each production phase in order to highlight the critical points of the milk life cycle. Not surprisingly the agricultural phase showed the higher environmental impact compared to the other phases due mainly to methane emission from enteric fermentation and manure storages. The dairy phase was the second contributor to the impact while other phases ( distribution and final waste disposal) had a minor impact. The present study confirms previous findings that an improvement of environmental performances of the primary production is the key to mitigate the total impact even if other stages (i.e. processing and packaging) might be strategic to optimize energy use and to limit food and material waste.