Can Italian wines outperform European benchmarks in environmental impact? An examination through the product environmental footprint method.

Nowadays, there is a pressing demand for precise tools to quantify sustainability and assess the contributions of products and processes to sustainable development. This requirement extends to the wine industry as well. In 2013, the European Commission introduced the Product Environmental Footprint (PEF), providing a standardized methodology grounded in life cycle thinking for evaluating the environmental impacts of products across various industries.

Development and testing of the Product Environmental Footprint Milk Tool: A comprehensive LCA tool for dairy products.

The paper describes the general structure of the PMT_01 tool developed to assess the environmental impacts of different dairy products as Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) cheeses of Lombardy Region (Po Valley - Northern Italy) and High Quality fresh pasteurized milk in a cradle-to-distribution center gate approach. Based on the PEF Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) methodology, the authors aim to provide a useful instrument for technicians and researchers in the evaluation of the environmental load of dairy products, allowing the process-hotspots identification through 16 different impact categories. The tool requires a modest amount of data that can be easily collected at the farms and at the dairies.