Life cycle assessment of bananas, melons, and watermelons from Costa Rica

Abstract

Banana and watermelon are the two most important fruit crops in the world, and Costa Rica is one of the leading producers worldwide. Even though the importance of banana, melon, and watermelon crops, few life cycle assessments have been done and published. This study aims to provide information on the environmental performance of the banana, melon, and watermelon sectors in Costa Rica to determine the most significant parameters in the life cycle of these fruits. The supply chain of the fruit crops was analyzed as follows: farm production, post-harvest treatment and packaging, distribution and retail, household consumption, and end of life. It means that the study was developed with a cradle-to-grave approach. The functional unit was 1 kg of fresh fruit delivered in a country of the European Union. Mainly, primary data were used from farms with a conventional farming system. The fruit production process was modeled in SimaPro 9.0. ReCiPe midpoint (H) was used for the impact assessment, where 11 impact categories were evaluated, including the categories required in the product category rules for fruits and nuts. In all three fruit crops studied, the most impact stages are farm production, distribution and retail (international transport), and the end-of-life stage. In this study, waste management is relatively high due to the high amount of the non-edible part of the fruit (38.6 % for bananas and 42 % for melon and watermelon). It has a significant influence on the toxicity impact categories. The carbon footprint for the banana supply chain was estimated at 0.805 kg CO₂-eq/kg of bananas produced in Costa Rica and consumed in Europe, and for melon and watermelon was 0.822 kg of CO₂-eq/kg. Since there are no life cycle assessments of banana fruit with a cradle-to-grave approach, and only studies focused on carbon footprint or with a cradle-to-gate approach are available, more studies and collection of information in situ are necessary.