Environmental impact of the production process of washing, assorting and packaging fresh potatoes and measures to mitigate it

Potato is a tuber that, due to its great variety, is available in the markets all year round. Moreover, it is a widely consumed product worldwide on the account of its affordability and versatility. Therefore, studying it in depth is significant from not only a nutritional or economic point of view, but also for considering its potential environmental impact. In this paper, a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) model is developed to assess the environmental impact of a model 5 kg bag of fresh washed potatoes. It considers all phases of potato processing, from the time the potato enters the facility until it leaves the gate (gate-to-gate LCA). The phase of the process with the greatest environmental impact is the cleaning and classification phase, mainly due to the significant consumption of water used in the cleaning process. The general consumption and storage phases are also relevant environmental impact phases to consider. In the case of these phases, the electricity consumption resulting from the operation of the facilities and product cooling is particularly noteworthy. After establishing the critical points, based on the environmental impact perspective, this paper proposes three measures to reduce the environmental impact of the process. The application of these three measures would reduce the environmental impact by 40% in environmental impact categories such as acidification or by 32% in the global warming category.