Carbon Footprint of Flour Production in Poland

Magdalena Wróbel-Jędrzejewska (), Ewelina Włodarczyk and Łukasz Przybysz
Additional contact information
Magdalena Wróbel-Jędrzejewska: Department of Technology and Refrigeration Techniques, Prof. Wacław Dąbrowski Institute of Agriculture and Food Biotechnology—State Research Institute, 92-202 Łódź, Poland
Ewelina Włodarczyk: Department of Technology and Refrigeration Techniques, Prof. Wacław Dąbrowski Institute of Agriculture and Food Biotechnology—State Research Institute, 92-202 Łódź, Poland
Łukasz Przybysz: Department of Technology and Refrigeration Techniques, Prof. Wacław Dąbrowski Institute of Agriculture and Food Biotechnology—State Research Institute, 92-202 Łódź, Poland

Sustainability, 2024, vol. 16, issue 11, 1-15

Abstract: The importance of carbon footprint (CF) analysis in the agricultural and food industries as a fundamental element of the means to achieve sustainable food production is emphasized here. In this study, flour production in Poland and the technological processes were characterized. This study’s aim was to determine and compare flour production CF for different companies. The production stages were examined, and aspects related to transportation and storage were analyzed. The obtained data made it possible to identify areas of potential improvement to increase the efficiency of production and logistics processes and reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The results showed that flour production CF av ranges from 0.042 to 0.080 kg CO 2eq /kg of product (in different companies). The results obtained for individual plants did not differ. One method of reducing CF was through the use of renewable energy sources. Photovoltaics (share of 17–20%) has significantly reduced flour production CF by 13–15%. The decrease was significant from March to October due to the country’s climatic conditions. The work highlights CF’s importance as a tool to reduce environmental impacts and optimize production costs while pointing out the need to customize the calculation methodology to the specifics of the product and process.

Keywords: flour carbon footprint; renewable energy sources; flour production; CSRD directives; greenhouse gas emissions reduction (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/11/4475/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/11/4475/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2024:i:11:p:4475-:d:1401551

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().