Environmental implications of perishables storage and retailing

Abstract A frequently overlooked topic in the food life cycle assessment studies is the environmental impact of food storage and retailing. In the cold food supply chains, the perishables distribution centers (PDCs) and supermarkets play a vital role and are the most energy–intensive commercial buildings due to cooling. Thus, this study focused on energy, water, and refrigerant use of PDCs and supermarkets and their implications on the environmental impacts of perishables in the United States. First, the life cycle assessment (LCA) method was used to calculate the climate change impact, non–renewable energy use, and water scarcity impact of perishables freezers and coolers and supermarkets’ departments. In addition, the national storage and supermarket impacts were allocated to different perishables based on the average food length of stay, storage packability, and supermarket sales. For example, in California, which has the largest retailing network, the PDCs and supermarkets produce more than 3,941 million kg of CO2-eq, 61,920 million of MJ, and 302 million of m3 annually over their life cycle. The climate change impact results for an average length of stay of perishables at the storage was from 1.9E-04 to 0.016 kg CO2-eq/kg for vegetables and fruit, respectively, and for retailing from 0.002 to 8.12 kg CO2-eq/kg for fish and seafood and frozen seafood, respectively. The research provided flexible and adaptive formulae, procedures, and data, which can be used to assess the environmental impacts of perishables storage and retailing in any state. As the cold food supply chain expands, this research may help reduce environmental impacts of food storage and retailing, inform future storage and supermarket management and planning, optimize the supply chain network design, and provide support for a more effective food waste policy.