Life cycle assessment of ale and lager beers production

The food production industry requires great amounts of resources and energy, causing, during the productions, negative effects on environment. For these reasons, in the last years, different products of consumption were analysed from the environmental point of view, following Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approaches. This work aimed at studying the environmental performance and the energy consumption of different beers produced in Italy by a small brewery. The study followed a life cycle approach and was focused on the industrial phases of the productions. A comparison among ale (high fermentation) and lager (low fermentation) beers' productions was made with the aim of address the productions toward a higher sustainability. The system boundaries covered by our research are only the industrial steps of the entire products' life cycle path: production in the brewery, bottling, packaging and waste disposal treatments ("gate to gate" and "gate to grave" approach). Raw materials, energy consumption and emissions to air, soil and water were normalized to the functional unit (beer in 33 cL glass bottle). In accordance with the reference standard for LCA (i.e., ISO 14040-14044), data were analysed using SimaPro 8.0.4 software and Life Cycle Inventory (LCI) was obtained using primary data and the Ecoinvent 3.1 database.