Life cycle assessment of aquaculture salmon

• Main Authors: Gyda Mjoll Ingolfsdottir, Eva Yngvadottir, Gudrun Olafsdottir
• Format: Report
• Language: English
• Published: Zenodo 2013
• Subjects: Life Cycle Assessment; Salmon; Iceland
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3597369

The purpose of this analysis is to perform a “cradle to gate” Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) for aquaculture salmon products. The results from this study as well as literature review done in work package 1.1 are used to propose Key Environmental Performance Indicators (KEPIs) for the aquaculture supply chain. This is done in order to develop a system to simplify data collection and information requirements oriented specifically to every stage involved in the life cycle. The KEPIs will be used to identify relevant input data to an innovative software tool (SENSE tool) to provide comprehensive environmental information for small and medium size enterprises (SMEs). This case study is valid for the operation of a hatchery and a salmon farm located in Iceland and a smokehouse in France. The LCA was done for two different functional units: 1 kg of fresh aquaculture salmon, head on gutted (HOG) and 1 kg of smoked aquaculture salmon fillets. Furthermore, two transportation scenarios were analysed for the fresh aquaculture salmon, sea freight and air freight. The fresh salmon (HOG) is transported from the aquaculture farm in Iceland to Europe where it is delivered at retailer or for secondary processing. Allocation between main products and by-products at hatchery, aquaculture farm and smokehouse was done using economic approach based on the shares of product in annual turnover. Allocation is done in accordance with ISO 14044 and recommendations from ENVIFOOD Protocol (2012). The midpoint impact assessment methods identified in task 1.3 of the SENSE Project were used for the environmental impact assessment in this study (Aronsson et al., 2013). The Life Cycle Impact Assessment (LCIA) is done for the impact categories: Climate change, eutrophication, acidification, human toxicity, ecotoxicity, land use, abiotic resource depletion and water depletion. The LCIA shows that for fresh salmon (HOG) transported from Iceland to Europe by sea freight the aquaculture farm including the feed production is by far the dominant life cycle ...