Carbon Footprint Evaluation of an Italian Micro-Brewery

In the last 20 years, the sector of the Italian beer has shown particular attention to environmental issues, reducing by about two-thirds the amount of water used in the production phase, more than a quarter of the energy consumption per hectoliter of product and approximately one fifth the amount of used glass. But the most important results were obtained for the amount of aluminum used in cans and for CO2 emissions (about -40%). These successes are probably attributable to the awareness and the marketing strategies of brewing companies of larger size (mainly for the ever-increasing use of kegs, which accounts for more environmentally friendly distribution system) while significant margins of improvement remain for microbreweries that represent the real entrepreneurial phenomenon in the beer sector, in both numbers of plants in the area and growth rates. Therefore, in this study we analyze the case of a micro-brewery of Friuli Venezia Giulia (FVG) Region to understand what may be, for a small private organization, the strengths and weaknesses in the management of the greenhouse gasses emissions. A Life Cycle case study was performed to detect and quantify the organization’s carbon footprint deriving from the overall activities of the brewery. Direct and indirect GHGs emissions from 3 high fermentation and 3 low fermentation beers production processes and packaging systems (0.33cL and 0.75cL glass bottles) were considered as well as the emissions related to plant management such as lighting, electric energy, workers mobility and waste treatment. Primary data were collected from a small brewer located in FVG region, secondary data were sourced from literature and databases included in the LCA SimaPro software used to calculate the CF applying the IPCC 2007 GWP 100a method. The organization is the reference unit for the analysis and the basis for defining the system boundaries, within these a carbon footprint of 58.2 t CO2eq was obtained mainly due to direct emissions, i.e. Scope 1, that contribute for 57% to the total GHG emissions of the organization.