Life cycle assessment of the straw mushroom production

Abstract

The life cycle assessment of a product (LCA) is a tool to calculate the quantity of environmental emissions from each production unit throughout the whole life cycle of a specific product starting from raw material extraction, manufacturing, use and distribution to the final disposal. This tool becomes increasingly more necessary to consumers as information pertaining to environmental impacts which partially supports their purchasing decisions in Thailand. Therefore, the objective of this study is to analyze the environmental impacts of SMEs straw mushroom production with three different formulas including the soybean hull formula, rapeseed hull formula and the cassava peel formula. The functional unit was set at 1 kg of the straw mushroom at the farm gate. The inventory data was collected from a farm in Nakornsawan province, Thailand. The environmental impacts were dominated by global warming, eutrophication and acidification. Results were compared with environmental impacts of a straw mushroom production by using the rapeseed hull formula and the cassava peel formula with a soybean hull as the conventional method. Results indicated that the straw mushroom production with a cassava peel had the lowest environmental impacts. The comparison in terms of global warming impact of three formulas were 1.6 kgCO2e for the soybean hull formula, 5.4 kgCO2e for the rapeseed hull formula and 0.8 kgCO2e for the cassava peel formula. The acidification impact of the soybean hull, cassava peel and the rapeseed hull were revealed at 13.5 gSO2e, 8.3 gSO2e and 23.9 gSO2e, respectively. The eutrophication impact of the soybean hull, cassava peel and the rapeseed hull were 10.0 gPO43-e, 1.9 gPO43-e and 42.5 gPO43-e, respectively. Uncertainty analysis of production yield, fungi yield, types of cotton production and types of plastic used were evaluated. The result showed that the organic farming of cotton production could reduce environmental impacts of straw mushroom production.