Environmental Evaluation in Bakery and Brewing Sectors in a Circular Economy Context

Ensuring sustainable food production for a growing population requires robust tools like the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), despite the fundamental complexities characterising the agri-food sector. This study evaluates the environmental impacts of beer and bread production, two important sectors, within a circular economy framework using the LCA. The analysis focuses on innovative products: bread incorporating brewery-spent grain and beer brewed from unsold bread. The study follows a cradle-to-gate approach, covering the entire upstream supply chain, including cultivation, milling, malting, and ingredient production. Cultivation emerges as the primary environmental hotspot in both systems. In bread production, the bakery and proofing phases also show high impacts, while in brewing, packaging is the dominant contributor, followed by boiling and hopping. For co-product processing, drying and transport are critical hotspots. Compared with conventional products, innovative circular products generally show lower environmental impacts, with exceptions related to organic cultivation and allocation constraints. Circular strategies notably reduce land use and marine eutrophication in most organic cases. Overall, the fully circular scenario outperforms the Conventional System in 13 impact categories, supporting the environmental potential of circular approaches in both sectors.