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Abstract Ice cream is consumed daily worldwide and yet its environmental impacts are scarcely known. This paper presents a first comprehensive life cycle assessment of market-leading vanilla and chocolate ice creams, considering both regular and premium products. The results suggest that their impacts are broadly similar across the 18 impact categories considered. For the majority of the impacts, chocolate regular ice cream is a slightly better option than the other varieties. Overall, the regular versions of the product have lower environmental impacts than the premium. Raw materials contribute most to the majority of impacts (>70%). The exception is ozone depletion, which is mainly due to refrigerated storage at the retailer (95%). The impacts are highly sensitive to the duration of storage and the type of refrigerant. Furthermore, the global warming potential of chocolate ice cream is very sensitive to land use change associated with cocoa beans cultivation, increasing the impact by 60%. Considering annual consumption of ice cream in the UK, the total primary energy demand contributes to 3.8% of energy consumption in the whole food sector while greenhouse emissions contribute 1.8%. Future improvements in the supply chain should focus on milk and cocoa production, reduced storage time and types of refrigerant used. Product reformulation to reduce the amount of milk (fat) and sugar should also be considered, in line with the emerging health-driven market trends. In addition to industry and policy makers, the findings of this study will be of interest to consumers, enabling them to make better choices with respect to environmental impacts of most popular ice creams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most European countries have committed to ambitious emissions reduction goals. Energy generation in particular is responsible for more than 30% of global emissions, where significant focus has been placed on renewable energy generation, including biomass. On the one hand, there are countries, like the UK, where the biomass stock is insufficient to meet the demand; on the other hand, there are countries, like Brazil, where the stock significantly exceeds the demand. To promote a natural symbiosis, it is necessary to take on the challenge of transporting biomass through long distances in an environmentally and economically efficient manner. This paper aims to assess the efficiency of alternative pathways of international biomass supply-chains. The alternatives involve different biomass origin regions, transportation modes, export ports and processing technologies, including torrefaction. Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) has been used for the first time to assess the efficiency of the alternative biomass supply chain pathways in a Latin American context, considering multiple-criteria relating to economic and environmental performance simultaneously, such as the biomass delivered cost, the environmental impact and the fossil energy consumption. Additionally, a sensitivity analysis was performed to analyse the robustness of the results under uncertainty in parameter values. The DEA approach presented can assist the process of planning biomass sourcing and improve decision-making under multiple decision criteria. The results can support medium- and long-term strategic decisions for decision- and policy-makers. • Efficiency assessment of biomass supply chain pathways between Brazil and the UK. • 56 alternative pathways considered with different supply chain structure. • Data Envelopment Analysis used for multi-criteria efficiency assessment. • Results can support decision and policy making. • Trade-offs between different criteria identified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]