Life Cycle Assessment of Sajor-caju Mushroom (Pleurotus Sajor-caju) from Different Sizes of Farms in Thailand

Abstract

Sajor-caju (Pleurotus sajor-caju) is one of the most famous mushroom in Thailand. Sajor-caju farming uses plastic bags for cultivation. Energy is needed for sterilization of substrate and waste management of spent plastic bag. Thailand has several sizes of sajor-caju farms which have different cultivation management. Therefore, the environmental performance of sajor-caju produced from three farm sizes was evaluated in this study using life cycle assessment approach. It was found that the main impacts came from (i) substrate preparation which are the production and transportation of the substrate raw materials and (ii) sterilization process. Medium farm showed relatively large impacts in all impact categories. The climate change caused by 1 kg sajor-caju produced from big, medium and small farms were 3.371, 5.003 and 3.0146 kg CO 2 eq, respectively.