The data provided by a representative sample of wine European producer has allowed to analyze with new perspective the real use of inputs, and to raise elements on their impact on environment and on production costs. Within an LCA-LCC approach, the adoption of indicators allowed to estimate the global environmental impact of the different technical means used in the winery, and to identify those responsible of the biggest effects; on average, and in decreasing order, they are glass bottles, cardboard boxes, fuel, electricity, closures, pesticides, fertilizers.
For each single input, variability among wineries of the quantity used is extremely high, suggesting large margins of improvements in the less virtuous production sites.
Interestingly, the most effective actions to improve environmental performance, i.e. changes of the packaging material, are not significantly affecting production process and consequently wine quality, and are accompanied by potential reduction of costs.
The approach allows a deeper analysis of each winery, the identification of the specific critical points and the development of a tailored improvement plan. Also, it is possible to simulate the effect of solution adopted and to estimate beforehand the cost/benefit of the improvements.
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