The utility of Life Cycle Assessment in the ready meal food industry

Luis Alberto Calderón, Loreto Iglesias, Adriana Laca, Mónica Herrero and Mario Díaz

Resources, Conservation & Recycling, 2010, vol. 54, issue 12, 1196-1207

Abstract: Lifestyle and consumer habits increasingly demand ready meals with high quality standards. A ready meal is a packaged food product already prepared for eating with minimum handling. Generally, ready meals only require heating or hydration, and can even consist of a complete prepared dish including all the ingredients, such as a stew. The ready meals industry uses raw materials with high environmental loads, needs energy and water and generates solid and liquid waste that must be properly managed. The environmental performance of the food industry is an issue of great importance for consumers, companies and administrative authorities responsible for environmental policies. This work demonstrates the utility of using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach to identify more sustainable options in the ready meals food sector.

Keywords: LCA; Ready meals; Canned food; Environmental management; Food industry; Sustainable production; Food waste; Food packaging (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S092134491000090X
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:recore:v:54:y:2010:i:12:p:1196-1207

DOI: 10.1016/j.resconrec.2010.03.015

Access Statistics for this article

Resources, Conservation & Recycling is currently edited by Ming Xu

More articles in Resources, Conservation & Recycling from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Kai Meng ().