1. Introduction
Environmental sustainability has been emerging as a pivotal issue in the agri-food sector as it directly impacts food and agriculture. Agriculture is highly vulnerable to climate change, as farming activities directly depend on climatic conditions, especially in developing countries. Climate change is a major contributing factor to the food price crisis, and its negative impacts on agriculture and food security in developing countries are expected to increase. The food sector is estimated to contribute about 25–30% of the total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions due to anthropogenic emissions from agriculture and land use, storage, transport, processing, packaging, retail, and consumption [
1]. Thus, food systems are heavily prioritised on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development [
2], a global commitment to eradicate poverty and hunger while ensuring reduction of environmental and socioeconomic concerns. Therefore, in order to advocate for sustainable measures, it is important to accurately assess the impacts of various activities and processes on the environment. Food and energy supply chains are associated with complex and intertwined environmental and socioeconomic impacts [
3]. This has led to the use of tools and methodologies for assessing these impacts along various supply chains, including the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA).
Cocoa (
Theobroma cacao) is an international cash crop that is mainly cultivated by smallholder farmers in lowland tropics, including parts of West Africa, Latin America, and Asia [
4]. Over the past 50 years, world supply and demand for cocoa has been increasing at an annual growth rate of 2.5% [
5]. Africa remains by far the most dominant cocoa producing region, contributing over 76% of world cocoa output, with the shares of the Americas and Asia and Oceania accounting for 16% and 8%, respectively [
5]. According to FAOSTAT [
6], world production of cocoa beans stood at 5.5 million tonnes, with Ivory Coast and Ghana alone contributing 55%. Cocoa is the chief agricultural export of Ghana and the main cash crop of the country. Ghana is the second largest producer and exporter of cocoa worldwide, and produced an estimated 900,000 metric tonnes of dried cocoa beans in the 2017/2018 crop year. The crop is a major contributor to Government revenue, generating about
$2 billion in foreign exchange annually while contributing about 7% to Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and about one quarter of the country’s export earnings [
7]. Cocoa is mainly cultivated for its beans which are processed into products such as cocoa liquor, butter, and powder, which serve as ingredients for other food products such as chocolate, medicinal products, and cosmetic products. Ghana cocoa is considered premium due to its unique flavour, slightly higher-than-average fat content; low levels of debris and bean defects, and thus it is sold at a premium price [
8]. The European Union (EU) continues to be the largest importer of Ghanaian cocoa beans, accounting for 53.27%, followed by Asia (26.58%), North America (10.96%), South America (8.59%), and Africa (0.60%) [
7].
In Ghana, the cocoa value chain is tightly regulated by the Ghana Cocoa Board (COCOBOD). The value chain consists of several phases which include production of seedlings, cultivation, harvesting, transportation, processing, and export. COCOBOD in its quest to increase output from the cocoa sector has implemented several initiatives, such as subsidy of fertilizer for farmers, mass pruning exercises, irrigation schemes, and mass spraying through the Cocoa Disease and Pest Control Project (CODAPEC), to facilitate the increase in cocoa production [
9,
10]. Currently, almost 80% of cocoa produced annually is exported in raw form. The government announced its intention to implement policies that will ensure that at least 50% of Ghana’s cocoa beans are processed locally and consumed [
11]. Consequently, COCOBOD secured a
$600 million syndicated loan to increase productivity along the cocoa supply chain while the government announced its decision to no longer export cocoa beans to Switzerland, one of its biggest trading partners [
12,
13].
Although it is important to increase the production and processing of cocoa, it is also paramount that negative impacts associated with these activities on the environment need to be assessed, an aspect considered increasingly important by many importing countries and consumers. Due to the interest in this topic several studies have been carried out to assess the environmental impacts associated with the cocoa and chocolate/confectionery industry in different parts of the world. Research in this area has gradually evolved from impact assessment of single chocolate products [
9,
14,
15,
16], to comparison of different chocolate variants and other chocolate product derivatives [
17,
18]. Additionally, different cultivation systems for cocoa cultivation such as traditional management systems and more innovative organic, cocoa-agroforestry, and technical systems have also been analysed [
9,
16,
19,
20,
21]. Evaluation of the environmental burden of different packaging systems for chocolate products have also gained a lot of interest [
14,
15,
16,
17,
18,
22,
23]. Different impact assessment methods, in some cases combinations of these methods, are now being used to provide a more robust assessment of the environmental performance of cocoa/chocolate products. However, not much emphasis has been placed on product distribution. The goals and scopes differed for most of the studies, with some having a ‘cradle-to-grave’ approach [
15,
16,
17,
18,
22,
24], others a ‘cradle-to-gate’ approach [
9,
19,
20], and others a ‘gate-to-gate’ approach [
14]. Most of the studies were carried out in European countries such as Italy and the UK where chocolate products and other cocoa confectionaries are highly consumed [
15,
17,
22,
25], a few studies were carried out in South America and Asia, where cocoa cultivation is gaining popularity [
19,
20]. However, there have been very limited studies conducted to measure the potential environmental impacts associated with the production and processing of cocoa and chocolate in West Africa even though the region produces more than half of the global cocoa beans and other cocoa product derivatives. While no LCA studies have been published in the Ivory Coast, only one study was conducted in Ghana over a decade ago by Ntiamoah and Afrane [
9], necessitating the need to conduct further studies to update existing literature as Ghana is fast becoming a major chocolate producing country.
Presently, consumers are more interested in knowing product impacts before making purchasing choices. Thus, key stakeholders, especially manufacturers, within the food sector, need to develop innovative strategies for the improvement of working conditions and efficient use of resources to derive maximum economic benefit with minimum environmental impacts [
25]. Manufacturers generally seek to either reduce the pollution caused by their products or highlight their environmental advantages. Governments also need reliable information to refine environmental policies or to devise incentives to promote environmental behaviours [
26]. Therefore, the tentative goal of this study was to assess the environmental impacts of the production and distribution of chocolate produced in Ghana. Furthermore, this study sought to provide information geared towards sustaining the environment, particularly on the environmental impacts associated with the local cultivation and processing of cocoa into chocolate in Ghana, and subsequently help in the identification of environmental hotspots along the Ghanaian cocoa value chain.
2. Materials and Methods
Life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to estimate the impacts of 1 kg of packaged chocolate bar, following the ISO 14040 and 14044 standards. The standard LCA has four distinct methodological phases and are completed in the following order: goal and scope definition, life cycle inventory analysis (LCI), life cycle impact assessment (LCIA), and interpretation of results. LCA is an iterative process, where the different phases can be repeated until the final objective is met [
27,
28]. LCA is a method that can relate multiple environmental impacts to the function of a product or service. LCA is a decision-making tool which gives a comprehensive approach for evaluating the environmental impacts of a product during the entire production system [
27,
29]. It is often used to identify the hotspots and the mitigation options of environmental loads associated with a production. LCA is widely accepted and used in the evaluation of activities and processes of the agri-food sector, including agricultural activities, transportation, processing, packaging, storage, and distribution. LCA has numerous applications—it can be used industrially for a variety of purposes, including support of a corporate strategy, research and development, and the design of products or processes. LCA is also used in education as well as for labels and product descriptions [
30]. The importance of LCA studies is increasing as companies increasingly apply them to their own products and require LCA data from their suppliers.
The methodology, data, and the assumptions considered in this study are further detailed in the following sections.
2.1. Goal and Scope Definition
The goal of the study was to assess the environmental impacts associated with the production of a packaged chocolate produced in Ghana. The study sought to identify environmentally weak points along the cocoa value chain where improvement can be made by farmers, chocolate manufacturers, transporters of cocoa beans and chocolate products to help improve the environmental aspects of the product. The target group for this study includes all stakeholders within the Ghanaian cocoa/chocolate industry, namely: COCOBOD, cocoa farmers, cocoa processors, chocolate manufacturers, environmental authorities and policy makers, the companies involved in storage, packaging, transport, retail, and recycling facilities, researchers, and NGOs.
The system boundary encompasses the essential energy and material inputs/outputs that are related to the processes of producing chocolate. The defined functional unit, based on which the inventory data was normalized for assessing the impacts in this study, was 1 kg chocolate made from cocoa cultivated in Ghana and other ingredients. As shown in
Figure 1, the system boundary covers both upstream and downstream processes including the following phases:
Cocoa cultivation: materials included were pesticide, insecticide, fertilizer, diesel.
Cocoa processing and chocolate manufacturing: raw materials included were cocoa beans, sugar, milk, flavour, and alkaline (Dutching). Electricity, steam, and water consumption in the manufacturing processes, including cleaning activities.
Packaging: Aluminium foil (primary), paper wrapper, and carton boxes.
Transport and Distribution: Transport of raw materials as well as packaging materials to the production facility. Distribution of the packaged product from the production facility to major retails centres was also considered in this study.
Other phases including consumption and waste management were excluded from the system boundary as done in other similar studies due to the many different scenarios that needed to be considered, making it difficult for standardization and comparison.
System Description and Data Quality
Data was obtained from different sources to complete the inventory table as shown in
Table 1. The foreground data were obtained from a local Ghanaian chocolate manufacturer using a specific questionnaire for the cocoa bean processing, chocolate manufacturing, and packaging phases. The company was established in 2011 on a 158-ha plot of land at the Free zones enclave Tema, and has the capacity to process 60,000 metric tons of cocoa beans per year, making it the largest fully integrated cocoa processor in Ghana. It is involved in the processing of Ghanaian cocoa beans into semi-finished products and confectionery for supply to the worldwide chocolate, ice cream, and bakery industries. Semi-finished products include natural and deodorised cocoa butter, specialised cocoa liquor, and natural and alkalised cocoa powder. In confectioneries, the manufacturer is a bean-to-bar producer of refined chocolate, chocolate drinks, and spreads. The background life cycle inventory (LCI) data and data to fill in gaps were obtained from academic peer reviewed publications and Ecoinvent v.3.01 [
31], as detailed further below.
Cocoa Cultivation
The production of dried cocoa beans encompasses the production of farm inputs and farm activities carried out during cocoa cultivation such as fertilizer application, pest and disease management, harvesting and breaking of pods, fermentation, drying, and temporary storage of dried beans. The average economic lifespan of cocoa trees was also estimated to be thirty years. Secondary data on the cultivation phase was obtained from [
9]. Additionally, background data on production of inputs such as fertilizer, insecticide, fuel were also obtained from Ecoinvent v.3.01 [
31].
Transportation of Cocoa Beans to Processing Factories
Dried and bagged cocoa beans are transported by trucks from the farming communities to the warehouses of Cocoa Marketing Company located in Tema, Takoradi, and Kumasi. Afterwards, they are further transported to the processing factories. Inventory data for transportation was calculated based on the average distance of 250 km travelled by engine trucks in Ghana from Kumasi to Accra. The truck chosen was a >32 metric ton based on the average 38-tonne total capacity (and 26 tonne payload) long distance truck-trailer of most cocoa haulage trucks in Ghana as was indicated by the local manufacturer. Data on fuel consumption and emissions for the transportation were obtained from the database based on the selected Euro-3 truck typology as shown in
Table 2.
Processing of Cocoa Beans into Chocolate
Cocoa beans are first processed into semi-finished products: cocoa liquor, butter, and powder. These serve as ingredients in the chocolate manufacturing process. Primary data on the sources of the cocoa beans (round trip distance from the cocoa bean warehouse to the manufacturing plant), the type, source, and the transportation links associated with obtaining the other ingredients such as sugar, flavour, and milk, use of electricity to run machines, water use, packaging materials, and the total output of chocolate produced in 2019 were obtained from the manufacturer. An average technology was considered for the processing and manufacturing of chocolate based on information provided by the manufacturer. Machines and equipment were purchased between 2011 and 2017 (70% purchased in 2011, 25% purchased in 2012, and 5% purchased in 2017). Additional background data included production of energy (electricity from hydropower and Liquified Petroleum Gas (LPG)) consumed by the plant’s manufacture of key ingredients such as sugar, milk, and flavour.
The manufacturer produces twelve different chocolate variants for the market, namely: extra dark chocolate (EDC) (72% cocoa solids), dark chocolate (DC) (56% cocoa solids), milk chocolate (MC) (38% cocoa solids), and flavoured milk chocolate (FMC) derivates (38% cocoa solids) including; strawberry, lime, coconut, ginger, honey, mango, coffee, orange, and banana. Further details are provided in
Table 3.
Packaging
Packaging is key in the food supply chain as it performs many functions including the protection of food products, containment, easy handling, safe transport, extension of shelf life, and marketing [
32]. The chocolate products are packaged after production to ensure maintenance of quality, ease of handling and labelling, and protection of the product. Three levels of packaging were considered in this study: aluminium foil (primary packaging) for protection against air and light, printed paper wrapper (secondary packaging) for labelling, and cardboard (tertiary package) for protection and ease of handling during transport. The manufacturer produces three different chocolate product typologies for the local market. Details on the different products and their respective packaging are presented in
Table 4. Primary data on the amount of packaging used was obtained from the manufacturer. In addition, the transportation of the packaging materials from China, where they are manufactured, was also taken in consideration.
Distribution Assumption
Due to the impracticalities related to determining a consumer’s intent to specifically leave their house to only purchase a bar of chocolate, assumptions had to be made for the distance consumers would travel to purchase the product. The average transportation distance was calculated from the travel distance to a store within heavily populated areas where the chocolate is mainly sold. The major towns selected were Kumasi, Takoradi, and Koforidua.
Allocation
Allocation procedures are applied in two phases. The first one regards cocoa shells, which constitutes one of the outflows of cocoa bean processing. Shell mass accounts for about 10% of cocoa beans and are used to fuel boilers in the processing plant as it is more economical—thus, no environmental impacts are associated with it. In this study, 100% of the impacts from cocoa bean processing were allocated to the co-products from cocoa processing (liquor, butter, cake, and powder) adopting an economic value allocation criterion as shown in
Table 5.
2.2. Life Cycle Inventory Table and Scenarios
Based on the assumptions reported in the previous section, the inventory table has been reported separating cocoa bean processing and chocolate manufacturing of four different products to improve transparency.
Table 6 reports values referred to the sum of all chocolate products (1 kg of each chocolate product—four kg in total).
Scenarios
In LCA studies, a scenario describes a possible future situation relevant for specific LCA applications based on specific assumptions about the future, and may also include the presentation of the development from present to future. Scenarios provides possibilities to prepare for alternative and uncertain future options without knowing anything about the probability of the possible outcomes [
33]. In this study, the impacts associated with several scenarios were considered and examined, to help in the suggestion of useful and relevant mitigation strategies.
The first scenario examined was the impacts associated with different destination for 1 kg (10 × 100 g) packaged chocolate bars to different destinations. The major cities in Ghana such as Kumasi, Koforidua, and Takoradi were considered as the baseline destinations while Ancona, Italy was considered as a scenario for the export of the product. In the scenario for local destination, a transport-mean which was a truck with a load capacity >32 metric ton was selected, and the distances were estimated using Google maps. In the scenario for international destination, the distance from the company to Ghana port, and from there to the port to Hamburg and by road to Ancona in Italy is illustrated in
Figure 2 below. The sea distances were also obtained from an online world seaports catalogue, marine, and port info website (
http://ports.com/ (accessed on 18 February 2021)).
Another scenario considered was the transportation of workers by company buses to the factory. This scenario is not directly linked to the process flow for chocolate production, however due to the possible importance of transportation of workers in Ghana it was considered. The company has seven regular buses with a capacity of 15 persons per bus for 105 estimated workers and runs a double shift system. Thus, the average distances were calculated, and the impact associated with the transportation of workers were determined as shown in
Table 7. This was compared to transportation of workers by private cars in Europe covering the same distance as shown in
Table 2.
2.3. Life Cycle Impact Assessment
The collected and aggregated data were input in the PRéConsultants SimaPro 8.2.3 software to construct all the significant process flows (inputs and outputs for each life cycle phase) to model the product systems. The CML_IA baseline V3.01 method was applied to estimate the environmental impacts based on the problem-oriented (midpoint) approach for 1 kg chocolate. In this study, the impact categories examined for CML_IA included: Abiotic Depletion Potential (ADP), Abiotic Depletion Potential (fossil fuels) (ADP) Acidification Potential (AP), Eutrophication Potential (EP), Global Warming Potential (GWP 100yr), Ozone layer depletion (ODP), Human Toxicity Potential (HTP), Fresh Water Aquatic Ecotoxicity Potential (FAETP), Marine Aquatic Ecotoxicity Potential (MAETP), Terrestrial Ecotoxicity Potential (TETP), and Photochemical Oxidation Potential (POCP) [
34]. Additionally, the Cumulative Energy Demand (CED V1.08) single issue was used. The calculation of CED included: non-renewable (from fossil and nuclear) and renewable (wind, solar, geothermal, and water) energy sources [
35].
4. Conclusions
The tentative goal of this LCA study was to assess the environmental impacts of the production and distribution of chocolate produced in Ghana. Generally, the environmental impact scores obtained were consistent with other similar studies conducted, particularly in Europe. Along the cocoa/chocolate supply chain, the manufacturing phase was found to be most impacting with milk and sugar accounting for most of the environmental burden. Consequently, darker chocolates were found to be more environmentally sustainable than milk chocolate derivatives. Although the 300 g packaged chocolate was expected to have the least environmental impact due to its larger size, the 100 g chocolate was rather found to have the least environmental burden, while the smaller 65 g chocolate was most impacting. With regards to transportation, impacts associated with the export of chocolate to Europe was not substantially different from distribution within Ghana. Furthermore, the comparison of impacts for the transportation of workers by buses in Ghana to passenger cars in Europe did not show any significant differences for the same distance. Therefore, the location of the processing and manufacturing plant in either Ghana or Europe does not confer any additional advantage from the environmental point of view. Plant siting in Ghana may be favoured due to availability of cocoa while Europe may be favoured by proximity to milk, sugar, and more efficient energy systems. Mitigation strategies should therefore be more focused on the cultivation phase, especially on the use of fertilizers and pesticides, and the manufacturing phase, particularly milk and sugar production. The quantification of the environmental impacts associated with chocolate could effectively support cocoa farmers, chocolate manufacturers, policy makers, and consumers in their pathway towards sustainable production, distribution, and consumption of chocolate products.