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Life cycle assessment of the Peruvian industrial anchoveta fleet: boundary setting in life cycle inventory analyses of complex and plural means of production

  • LCA FOR ENERGY SYSTEMS AND FOOD PRODUCTS
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Abstract

Purpose

This work has two major objectives: (1) to perform an attributional life cycle assessment (LCA) of a complex mean of production, the main Peruvian fishery targeting anchoveta (anchovy) and (2) to assess common assumptions regarding the exclusion of items from the life cycle inventory (LCI).

Methods

Data were compiled for 136 vessels of the 661 units in the fleet. The functional unit was 1 t of fresh fish delivered by a steel vessel. Our approach consisted of four steps: (1) a stratified sampling scheme based on a typology of the fleet, (2) a large and very detailed inventory on small representative samples with very limited exclusion based on conventional LCI approaches, (3) an impact assessment on this detailed LCI, followed by a boundary-refining process consisting of retention of items that contributed to the first 95 % of total impacts and (4) increasing the initial sample with a limited number of items, according to the results of (3). The life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) method mostly used was ReCiPe v1.07 associated to the ecoinvent database.

Results and discussion

Some items that are usually ignored in an LCI’s means of production have a significant impact. The use phase is the most important in terms of impacts (66 %), and within that phase, fuel consumption is the leading inventory item contributing to impacts (99 %). Provision of metals (with special attention to electric wiring which is often overlooked) during construction and maintenance, and of nylon for fishing nets, follows. The anchoveta fishery is shown to display the lowest fuel use intensity worldwide.

Conclusions

Boundary setting is crucial to avoid underestimation of environmental impacts of complex means of production. The construction, maintenance and EOL stages of the life cycle of fishing vessels have here a substantial environmental impact. Recommendations can be made to decrease the environmental impact of the fleet.

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Notes

  1. The fishery has been considered monospecific since 2003, at least according to official statistics, although obviously minor quantities of other species are caught—mostly the longnose anchovy (Anchoa nasus) that are also reduced into fishmeal. Before the collapse of the sardine stock, this species and others were also landed in large quantities.

  2. The representativeness of our sample was confirmed by the fourth coauthor of this paper, who worked for 21 years in fleet management in the largest and third largest fishing companies.

  3. LSW values are also frequently unknown by the ship operator because most vessels were constructed several decades ago, and many of them were purchased from another company.

  4. Vikingas are clustered into two holding capacity categories including the official upper and lower boundaries, 32.6–50 and 50–110 m3.

  5. The impact of refrigeration system is ignored because the few large vessels that have it were initially built and used for another fishery (horse-mackerel and mackerel), and most of them belong to the segment >635 m3 which is not considered in this work.

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Acknowledgments

This work, carried out by members of the anchoveta supply chain (ANCHOVETA-SC) project (http://anchoveta-sc.wikispaces.com; Accessed Oct 04, 2013) is a contribution to the International Join Laboratory “Dynamics of the Humboldt Current system” (LMI-DISCOH) coordinated by the Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) and the Instituto del Mar del Peru (IMARPE), and gathering several other institutions. This work was carried out under the sponsorship of the Direction des Programmes de Recherche et de la formation au Sud (DPF) of the IRD. We acknowledge Philippe Roux (Cemagre, France) for suggesting a figure to formalise our ideas (Fig. 1). The first two authors are members of the ELSA research group (environmental life cycle and sustainability assessment, http://www.elsa-lca.org/. Accessed Oct 04, 213). The Sociedad Nacional de Pesquería (National Society for Fisheries, SNP) facilitated our contacts with some of the largest fishing companies.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. UMR 212 EME, Centre de Recherche Halieutique Méditerranéenne et Tropicale, Institut de Recherche pour le Développement (IRD) , BP 171, Rue Jean Monnet, 34203, SETE cedex, France

    Pierre Fréon & Angel Avadí

  2. Université Montpellier 2, Sciences et Techniques, 2 Place Eugène Bataillon, Montpellier Cedex 5, 34095, France

    Angel Avadí

  3. Facultad de Oceanografía, Pesquería, Ciencias Alimentarias y Acuicultura, Universidad Federico Villarreal, Calle Roma 350, Lima, Peru

    Rosa Amelia Vinatea Chavez

  4. Iriarte & Asociados (I&A), Miro Quesada 191, of. 510, Cercado de Lima, Lima, Peru

    Federico Iriarte Ahón

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  1. Pierre Fréon
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  2. Angel Avadí
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  3. Rosa Amelia Vinatea Chavez
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  4. Federico Iriarte Ahón
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Correspondence to Pierre Fréon.

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Responsible editor: Friederike Ziegler

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Fréon, P., Avadí, A., Vinatea Chavez, R.A. et al. Life cycle assessment of the Peruvian industrial anchoveta fleet: boundary setting in life cycle inventory analyses of complex and plural means of production. Int J Life Cycle Assess 19, 1068–1086 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-014-0716-3

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