LCA of tomato sauce made in France with French and with Turkish tomato paste

The purpose of this study is to analyse two processed tomato value chains: that of French concentrated tomato paste and tomato sauce in France and that of concentrated tomato paste in Turkey, with the aim of identifying the environmental “hot spots” for each of them. The FLONUDEP project (FLONUDEP is a French National Research Agency funded project regarding environmental, social and nutritional sustainability of tomato supply chains)carried out an environmental LCA ”from cradle to grave”. Original data have been collected through surveys among a sample of farms (France=4; Turkey=4), processing plants (France=2; Turkey=4), logistic organization (France=2), 1 supermarket and consumers (n=850), Findings show that French tomato sauce is slightly less impacting than the Turkish one for GHG emissions and human toxicity, whereas results are similar for eutrophication. At plant level, critical points are mainly packaging, energy used and steam production.