Enhancing Eco-Efficiency of Ice Cream Production through Integrated Life Cycle Assessment and Life Cycle Costing

Abstract

The ice cream industry is highly energy-intensive due to its extensive reliance on refrigeration systems, leading to significant environmental burdens and increased production costs. Although Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) and Life Cycle Costing (LCC) have been widely applied to evaluate industrial sustainability, studies integrating these approaches with eco-efficiency analysis to assess energy-saving strategies in ice cream production remain limited. Therefore, this study evaluated the environmental and economic performance of strawberry loly ice cream production through an integrated LCA, LCC, and eco-efficiency framework and assessed the potential of Phase Change Material (PCM)-based mitigation. A gate-to-gate approach was adopted using a functional unit of 1,000 L of strawberry loly ice cream per production cycle. Environmental impacts were quantified using the ReCiPe 2016 Endpoint (H) method implemented in SimaPro, while economic performance was evaluated using production-stage LCC. The baseline results indicated a total environmental impact of 860 Pt, with cold storage identified as the principal hotspot, contributing 507 Pt (58.9%) due to its electricity consumption of 1,527.8 kWh per production cycle. Human health was the dominant damage category, accounting for 823 Pt (95%) of the total environmental impact. The calculated PCM mitigation reduced electricity consumption by by 24.5%, resulting in a decrease in the total environmental impact to 740 Pt (13.95%) and a 4.06% increase in value added. Overall, the PCM mitigation scenario demonstrated superior environmental and economic performance, indicating that integrating thermal energy storage with eco-efficiency assessment provides an effective strategy for improving the sustainability of energy-intensive food manufacturing systems.