Addressing the freshwater use of a Portuguese wine (‘vinho verde’) using different LCA methods

The increasing scarcity of freshwater in many parts of the world triggered a growing concern about freshwater use and its quality degradation. Currently, a number of methods to assess the potential environmental harm in ecosystems services derived from freshwater use are available under the framework of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). In this study, the assessment of the quantitative freshwater use impact of a Portuguese wine (white ‘vinho verde’) was undertaken using the methods suggested by: Pfister et al. (2009), Frischknecht et al. (2009a, b), Ridoutt et al. (2010), and Milà i Canals et al. (2009). These methods differ significantly concerning the type of freshwater, freshwater scarcity level, and characterisation factors considered. antitative freshwater use of white’ vinho verde’ considering both viticulture and wine production stages (disaggregated into foreground and background sub-systems) is analysed at the inventory and impact assessment levels. Moreover, the freshwater footprint profile i.e. the compilation of quantitative and degradative environmental impacts related to freshwater use is also evaluated. ventory results of freshwater use obtained by the Milà i Canals et al. (2009) method differ significantly from the ones obtained by other used methods due to the consideration of land use effects. At the impact assessment level, a large variability for the freshwater use impact was obtained, mainly due to different characterisation factors considered by each method. Besides, the background sub-systems arise as the major hotspots for all methods other than that proposed by Milà i Canals et al. (2009) and for all degradative impact categories other than eutrophication.