Potential of Traditional Sago Starch: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) Perspective

Abstract

Half of the world's sago production comes from Indonesia, and about 90% of Indonesia's sago originates from Papua, including West Papua. There are three types of technology used to produce sago starch in Indonesia, namely traditional, semi-mechanical and mechanical processes. In Papua generally the processing of sago starch is carried out with traditional processes. This study is intended to evaluate the environmental impacts caused by the traditionally processed sago starch products using the product life cycle (LCA) approach. Environmental impacts are estimated by analyzing the carbon footprint of GHG emissions resulting from 1 ton of dry sago starch. The scope of the product life cycle is limited to the stage of harvesting, transportation and extraction to produce dry sago starch. The results of the study show that the impact of GHG emissions generated to produce 1 ton of sago starch is 17.9 kgCO2eq. The biggest contribution came from the extraction process, especially from the drying process which was 12.25 kgCO2eq (68%). This value of impact is much lower when compared to corn starch (2700 kg CO2eq), potato starch (2402 kg CO2eq) and cassava starch (4310 kg CO2eq). This is mainly due to the low requirement of energy input of this traditional technology.