Page 179 - Materials Chemistry, Second Edition

164 LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT HANDBOOK

and total dry matter. Moreover, even the same content of nutrients can be used
in various ways (Marshall, 2001).
The study of Notarnicola et ah (Notarnicola, et ah 2010) on wine shows just
some of the elements outlined above. Different from what could be thought,
wine production is a complex activity in which the technology plays the same
important role of the grape cultivation and of the winemaker skills. Even if the
raw materials are only grapes, yeast and some chemicals, the possible alterna-
tive processes are so many that the produced wine can have very different
quality levels (Notarnicola, et ah 2003). The results of the study showed how
much the results could change if a different functional unit is used and how the
environmental performance of wine production changes if more technologies
are used in order to obtain a higher quality wine. Moreover, the use of tech-
nology made to increase the quality of wine and to avoid defects could lead
to a higher consumption of energy, materials and chemicals that, in terms of
LCA, could mean higher environmental impact.
Despite the great variety of wines, most of the LCA studies of wine and,
above all, those ones with comparative aims, artificially consider the final
products as having the same characteristics. As a consequence, the functional
unit used is a specific amount of product in litres or kilograms, without any ref-
erence to the main characteristics of products. Product Category Rules (PCRs)
regarding environmental product declaration (EPD) for packaged sparkling
red, white and rose wines also suggest as functional unit one litre of wine
(Swedish-Environmental-Management-Council, 2006).
As expected, by including more technology in order to produce a quality
wine gives the result of a worse environmental performance if the comparison
is made on the basis of volume or mass. By considering a different function
of the system, such as the production of a beverage with a certain alcoholic
degree or a certain hedonistic value (the hedonistic value is an index which
measures the main characteristics of wine based on the traditional descrip-
tors of the sensory feedback), and, consequently, using a different functional
unit, the results are completely inverted. This can be seen in Figure 7.1 for the
impact category Abiotic Depletion. This figure shows the characterization of

100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
FU volume FU alcoholic FU hedonistic
degree value
Figure 7.1 ADP characterisation of two wine systems assuming volume, alcoholic degree and
hedonistic value as functional unit.