Strategies for wine environmental impact reduction. A multi-year-based life cycle assessment of a Mediterranean case study

The European Commission is committed to achieving climate neutrality by 2050, aligned with the Paris Agreement temperature goal. Food systems contribute significantly to greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions through agriculture, energy use, and waste, while also offering mitigation opportunities via sustainable farming and carbon sequestration. Wine production is a relevant agro-industrial activity that relies on multiple inputs which cause significant environmental impacts, making it essential to find ways to reduce them. Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology is widely used in the identification of hotspots and as a decision support tool when evaluating alternative practices. While numerous studies have assessed the wine supply chain, they mostly focus on limited impact categories and rely heavily on secondary data. This study presents a comprehensive LCA of wine production in a Portuguese medium-sized winery, incorporating four years of data to improve the robustness and representativeness of the results. Using the ReCiPe method, the most impactful stages were identified. Then, eight targeted mitigation strategies were evaluated, considering measures that are feasible in the short term and require minimal operational changes. The evaluation of these strategies resulted in an average reduction of up to 26% for packaging-related alternatives, and approximately 10% for electricity and pest and disease management strategies, across all impact categories, with statistically significant improvements observed in most indicators at a 95% confidence level. These findings provide practical and valuable insights to support informed decision-making by small and medium-sized enterprises aiming to reduce their environmental impact.