Assessing Environmental Impacts of Sea Bass Cage Farms in Greece and Albania Using Life Cycle Assessment
- PDF / 3,399,008 Bytes
- 12 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 63 Downloads / 221 Views
RESEARCH PAPER
Assessing Environmental Impacts of Sea Bass Cage Farms in Greece and Albania Using Life Cycle Assessment Evangelos Konstantinidis1 · Costas Perdikaris1 · Evangelia Gouva2 · Cosmas Nathanalides2 · Thomas Bartzanas3,4 · Vasileios Anestis3,4 · Simo Ribaj5 · Athina Tzora2 · Ioannis Skoufos2 Received: 9 June 2020 / Revised: 21 September 2020 / Accepted: 3 October 2020 © University of Tehran 2020
Abstract Life-cycle assessment (LCA) is increasingly used in aquaculture studies to quantitatively assess materials, energy flows and impacts of a production system and to evaluate the environmental performance of products and services. The application of LCA to sea bass production in two marine farms located in Greece and Albania demonstrated that feed and accordingly feed conversion ratio, followed by fry were the two predominant factors mostly affecting the eighteen ecological impact categories assessed. In particular, for the Greek farm, feed affected all but one of the impact categories from 76.5 to 99.9%, reflecting the relation of fish feed not only to resource use, but also to impacts during processing, transportation and to its distribution to the farmed stocks. The role of feed was also reflected on its share (90.6%) in the ‘global warming’ indicator. Fry production resulted in a major contribution (99.0%) to the ‘water consumption’ impact category, which is related to the hatchery operation. Concerning the Albanian farm, the impact of fish feed was even more pronounced in most of the ecological indicators, due to the absence of motorised equipment. It is concluded that feeding management and initiatives to improve the cost and the environmental impact in both counties could result in immediate improvements of the ecological and economical outcomes of the mariculture industry in the region. Further benefits are also expected for the ecological sustainability and economic viability of the sector, as consumers are exhibiting interest in environmental awareness and eco-labelling. Article Highlights • Aquaculture is a rapidly growing sector of the economy in Europe and Globally. Greece and Albania are two
neighbouring countries which can compete for marine resources required for marine aquaculture development. As a result of an international research collaboration on a project funded by the European Union, we carried out research about the environmental impact of marine aquaculture in Albania and Greece. The results of this work are presented in the submitted manuscript which is the first, which presents the results of LCA for assessing the environmental impacts of sea bass cage farms in Greece and Albania.
* Cosmas Nathanalides [email protected] 1
Department of Fisheries, Regional Unit of Thesprotia, Epirus, GR 46100 Igoumenitsa, Greece
2
Department of Agriculture, School of Agriculture, University of Ioannina, GR 47100 Arta, Greece
3
Department of Natural Resources Management and Agricultural Engineering, Agricultural University of Athens, Iera Odos 75, GR‑11855 Athens, Greece
4
Centre for R
Data Loading...
