Life cycle environmental impacts and costs of beer production and consumption in the UK

The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, Feb 2016

Purpose Global beer consumption is growing steadily and has recently reached 187.37 billion litres per year. The UK ranked 8th in the world, with 4.5 billion litres of beer produced annually. This paper considers life cycle environmental impacts and costs of beer production and consumption in the UK which are currently unknown. The analysis is carried out for two functional units: (i) production and consumption of 1 l of beer at home and (ii) annual production and consumption of beer in the UK. The system boundary is from cradle to grave. Methods Life cycle impacts have been estimated following the guidelines in ISO 14040/44; the methodology for life cycle costing is congruent with the LCA approach. Primary data have been obtained from a beer manufacturer; secondary data are sourced from the CCaLC, Ecoinvent and GaBi databases. GaBi 4.3 has been used for LCA modelling and the environmental impacts have been estimated according to the CML 2001 method. Results and discussion Depending on the type of packaging (glass bottles, aluminium and steel cans), 1 l of beer requires for example 10.3–17.5 MJ of primary energy and 41.2–41.8 l of water, emits 510–842 g of CO2 eq. and has the life cycle costs of 12.72–14.37 pence. Extrapolating the results to the annual consumption of beer in the UK translates to a primary energy demand of over 49,600 TJ (0.56 % of UK primary energy consumption), water consumption of 1.85 bn hl (5.3 % of UK demand), emissions of 2.16 mt CO2 eq. (0.85 % of UK emissions) and the life cycle costs of £553 million (3.2 % of UK beer market value). Production of raw materials is the main hotspot, contributing from 47 to 63 % to the impacts and 67 % to the life cycle costs. The packaging adds 19 to 46 % to the impacts and 13 % to the costs. Conclusions Beer in steel cans has the lowest impacts for five out of 12 impact categories considered: primary energy demand, depletion of abiotic resources, acidification, marine and freshwater toxicity. Bottled beer is the worst option for nine impact categories, including global warming and primary energy demand, but it has the lowest human toxicity potential. Beer in aluminium cans is the best option for ozone layer depletion and photochemical smog but has the highest human and marine toxicity potentials.

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Life cycle environmental impacts and costs of beer production and consumption in the UK

Int J Life Cycle Assess Life cycle environmental impacts and costs of beer production and consumption in the UK David Amienyo 0 1 Adisa Azapagic 0 1 0 School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science, The University of Manchester , Room C16, The Mill, Sackville Street, M13 9PL Manchester , UK 1 Responsible editor: Almudena Hospido 2 Adisa Azapagic Purpose Global beer consumption is growing steadily and has recently reached 187.37 billion litres per year. The UK ranked 8th in the world, with 4.5 billion litres of beer produced annually. This paper considers life cycle environmental impacts and costs of beer production and consumption in the UK which are currently unknown. The analysis is carried out for two functional units: (i) production and consumption of 1 l of beer at home and (ii) annual production and consumption of beer in the UK. The system boundary is from cradle to grave. Methods Life cycle impacts have been estimated following the guidelines in ISO 14040/44; the methodology for life cycle costing is congruent with the LCA approach. Primary data have been obtained from a beer manufacturer; secondary data are sourced from the CCaLC, Ecoinvent and GaBi databases. GaBi 4.3 has been used for LCA modelling and the environmental impacts have been estimated according to the CML 2001 method. Results and discussion Depending on the type of packaging (glass bottles, aluminium and steel cans), 1 l of beer requires for example 10.3-17.5 MJ of primary energy and 41.2-41.8 l of water, emits 510-842 g of CO2 eq. and has the life cycle Beer; Climate change; Environmental impacts; Life cycle assessment; Life cycle costs; Packaging - costs of 12.72–14.37 pence. Extrapolating the results to the annual consumption of beer in the UK translates to a primary energy demand of over 49,600 TJ (0.56 % of UK primary energy consumption), water consumption of 1.85 bn hl (5.3 % of UK demand), emissions of 2.16 mt CO2 eq. (0.85 % of UK emissions) and the life cycle costs of £553 million (3.2 % of UK beer market value). Production of raw materials is the main hotspot, contributing from 47 to 63 % to the impacts and 67 % to the life cycle costs. The packaging adds 19 to 46 % to the impacts and 13 % to the costs. Conclusions Beer in steel cans has the lowest impacts for five out of 12 impact categories considered: primary energy demand, depletion of abiotic resources, acidification, marine and freshwater toxicity. Bottled beer is the worst option for nine impact categories, including global warming and primary energy demand, but it has the lowest human toxicity potential. Beer in aluminium cans is the best option for ozone layer depletion and photochemical smog but has the highest human and marine toxicity potentials. 1 Introduction Global beer consumption has been growing steadily over the past decades and in 2012 it reached 187.37 billion (109) litres (Kirin 2014) , equivalent to 568 billion 33 cl bottles. China is the largest beer-consuming country in the world with 23.6 % share of the global market, followed by the USA, with roughly half of that. The UK is ranked 8th (Kirin 2014) with 4.5 bn litres of beer produced in 2014 (BBPA 2015) , making it the largest alcoholic drinks sector in the country (Fig. 1). Half of the total beer produced in the UK is consumed in on-trade Wine, 28% Others, 9% Beer, 43% Spirits and liqueurs, 20% outlets (bars, restaurants and other entertainment venues) and the remaining half is bought off-trade (off-licence shops, supermarkets and other retailers) for home consumption (BBPA 2015) . The UK beer market was worth an estimated £17.12 billion (retail selling price) in 2013 (Key Note 2014) . There are several studies of life cycle environmental impacts of beer produced in different countries, including Australia (Narayanaswamy et al. 2004) , Greece (Koroneos et al. 2005) , Italy (Cordella et al. 2008) , Spain (Hospido et al. 2005) , Japan (Takamoto et al. 2004) and USA (Climate Conservancy 2008) . Some studies considered beer production in whole regions, including the Nordic countries (Talve 2001) , Europe and North America (BIER 2012) . The assumptions and system boundaries in the studies vary widely, leading to significant differences in the impacts. For example, according to Talve (2001) , the agricultural production of beer ingredients contributes almost 80 % to the (weighted) environmental impacts, followed by transport (8 %) and production of auxiliary materials (6 %) and beer (5 %). On the other hand, Koroneos et al. (2005) found that the bottle production was the highest contributor (up to 94 %) to the impacts while Hospido et al. (2005) reported that the production of packaging as well as the cultivation of ingredients and transport were responsible for the largest portion of impacts. The inclusion of different environmental impacts and the methods used to estimate them also varies across the studies, which makes crosscomparisons difficult. U (...truncated)


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David Amienyo, Adisa Azapagic. Life cycle environmental impacts and costs of beer production and consumption in the UK, The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, 2016, pp. 492-509, Volume 21, Issue 4, DOI: 10.1007/s11367-016-1028-6