Life Cycle Assessment of Olive Oil: A Case Study in Southern Italy

The paper describes the results of a specific LCA based analysis of the production of olive oil in the region ofCalabria, in southern Italy.The goal of the study is to assess the energy and environmental impacts of different scenarios involvingconventional and organic cultivations, plains and hills cultivations and involving different operating techniques.The study also aims at assessing the share of each life cycle step on the total of energy and environmentalimpacts.The functional unit chosen for the comparative analysis is a glass bottle of 0.75 L of extra virgin olive oil. A“from cradle to gate”perspective was chosen. The analysis was developed according to the LCA standards of theISO 14040 series.The analysis is based on afield analysis developed in the last years in the province of Reggio Calabria betweenmore than 50 enterprises and stakeholders of thefield, representative of the whole Calabria region and of mostsouthern Italy. The data used for the development of mass and energy balances are related to the years2013–2015.The results clarify that for all indicators that thefirst part of the life cycle–from the production, including thegrowth of the olive plant to the full production stage–is the most relevant, variable between 80.6% share in thecase of the particulate matter indicator to the 99.64% in the case of land use (Hill–Biological agriculturescenario).Relevant differences can be also traced for each specific indicator among all scenarios; high impacts are tracedfor the agricultural stages among all scenarios (70%−90% in all indicators) with high impacts caused byfertilizers. Among the transformation stages the bottle production is one of the most relevant sources of life cycleenergy uses and environmental impacts (80–90%)