Life cycle assessment of European cultivated peanuts: evaluating sustainability across different peanut products

Abstract Purpose The present work aims to assess and provide valuable insights in the environmental sustainability of three different peanut-based products, namely peanut milk, peanut butter, and peanut oil, produced from European cultivated peanuts via performing a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) analysis. Methods LCA was performed based on the ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2006 series with ReCiPe 2016 (Hierarchist, H) being selected as the impact assessment methodology. Results Based on the obtained results, peanut milk exhibited the best environmental performance, followed by peanut butter and peanut oil. Specifically, the lowest carbon footprint of 0.183 kg CO 2 eq. per kg of product was evaluated for the case of peanut milk, followed by peanut butter and peanut oil (2.196 and 4.358 kg CO 2 eq. per kg of product, respectively), with the environmental hotspots differing among the products. For peanut milk, packaging was the main contributor to climate change, while in peanut butter production, roasting and drying were the dominant hotspots due to their high thermal energy demand. Finally, roasting, mechanical processing, and refining due to their high energy and water requirements were identifies as the environmental hotspots of peanut oil. Conclusions The findings indicate that European cultivated peanuts and their derived products can be characterized as environmentally sustainable, particularly under optimized processing conditions.