Evaluating sustainability of the surimi supply chain in India: a life cycle assessment approach

PURPOSE: Being a primary product for a multitude of processed seafood, the ecological impacts of surimi have been less noted, despite its global supply dominance, especially in India. Life cycle assessment (LCA) evaluates the environmental sustainability of existing supply chain by comparing it with two other supply chain alternatives. The ecologically understudied and fragmented nature of the existing Indian surimi supply chain necessitates the authors to highlight the significance of supply chain localizations and the reductions obtained in ecological impacts. The current study will show the direction for developing strategy(s) to improve the environmental sustainability in Indian stance. METHODS: A cradle-gate approach of LCA is adopted right from fishing to an export market. Different supply chain alternatives such as the current state and two different states with different localizations and downstream alternatives (i.e., Scenario 1 with partial localizations and Scenario 2 with complete localizations) are analyzed to study the impacts. An economic analysis of these scenarios is also carried out to check the competency of the proposed alternatives for economic sustainability. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: Eleven environmental impacts considered for analysis under the existing supply chain scenario denote that the process of fishing has an average environmental impact of 74%. However, the inclusion of downstream operations such as distribution in the LCA analysis reveals a significant share of environmental impact averaging 53% from fishing and 34% from distribution for the 11 environmental indicators considered. A detailed assessment of the various alternatives considered reveals vital improvements for both Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 in human carcinogenic toxicity (8% and 16%), fossil resource scarcity (8% and 20%), and global warming potential (GWP) (6% and 16%), respectively, in comparison to the current state. A carbon footprint assessment of the complete surimi supply chain to an export market (considered in this study) via ship freight denotes reduction in footprint values from 4.67 kg CO₂ equivalent/kg (existing state) to 4.43 kg CO₂ equivalent/kg (Scenario 1) and 4.06 kg CO₂ equivalent/kg (Scenario 2), respectively. The economic analysis reveals maximum fiscal gains of 9.83% and 13.31% in Scenario 1 and Scenario 2 respectively. CONCLUSION: Results highlight that the introduction of supply chain localizations in the Indian surimi scenario can reduce environmental impacts and improve economic savings. Among the assessed alternatives, Scenario 2 is found to be the best sustainable alternative with reduced environmental impacts and improved savings.