Environmental impacts and effects on greenhouse gas emissions in shrimp feed production system for aquaculture - A case study in India

Abstract

Attributional life cycle assessment study examines the environmental impact of raw materials, machinery, and unit operations. In the present work, an attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) was employed to assess the environmental and greenhouse gas impacts of a shrimp feed production system. A commercial shrimp feed mill in Tamil Nadu, India, provided inventory data for one-ton shrimp feed (functional unit) for a Cradle-to-Gate evaluation using environmental impact methodologies, specifically Impact 2002+ in SimaPro® (V9.3.0.3) software. The results showed that human health (0.003357 DALY), ecosystem quality (2720.518 PDF × m² × yr), climate change (2031.696 kg CO₂ eq), and resources (71019.42 MJ primary) were the most significantly impacted. The human health category was found to be the most prominent after normalization and weighting (0.47 pt), and strategies were suggested accordingly. The GWP20 and GWP100 measures for long-term climate change were calculated to be 8.7 and 7.33 kg CO₂ eq, respectively. Cast iron used in machinery production (GWP 20-15.40%, GWP100-134.5%) and electricity use (GWP 20-6.13%, GWP 100-6.9%) accounted for sizable portions of the burden. Feed production is estimated to contribute 0.2% of global CO₂ emissions within the proposed global context. These findings are significant regarding economically and environmentally sustainable shrimp feed production worldwide.

Keywords: Carbon footprint; Life cycle assessment; Shrimp feed; Sustainable animal farming.