Absolute Environmental Sustainability Assessment of an Avocado Oil Supply Chain

The increasing demand for avocado oil raises the question of whether production and consumption remain within environmentally sustainable limits. This study evaluated a cradle-to-grave avocado oil supply chain, produced in Colombia and consumed in Germany, by integrating Life Cycle Assessment with planetary-boundary-derived environmental budgets. The production and consumption of 1 kg of avocado oil generated 7.13 kg CO2-eq, 0.0074 kg P-eq, 0.0068 kg N-eq, 0.1875 m2·a crop-eq, and 1.95 m3 world-eq deprived for climate change, freshwater eutrophication, marine eutrophication, land use, and water use, respectively. Monte Carlo analysis (1000 iterations) indicated that the LCIA results were relatively stable with respect to the inventory uncertainty represented in the background data. We compared the environmental impacts associated with a hypothetical annual intake scenario in which the EAT–Lancet recommended intake of unsaturated oils is supplied entirely by avocado oil with allocated Safe Operating Space budgets. Under equal per-capita sharing, the per-person environmental entitlement is identical across geographical perspectives; geographical differentiation arises only when region-specific sharing factors, such as the economic/FCE factor, are applied. The results show that sustainability conclusions depend strongly on the principle used to share the available environmental capacity among products and activities.