International Journal of Environmental Science and Development

Abstract— The research of this study was to assess the environmental impact of banana supply chain in Thailand in accordance with the recommendations of the international standards ISO 14040 and 14044. The scope of this study was to determine banana supply chain located at Pathumthani province, Thailand with the production performance in 2018. One kilogram of banana plantation and Six hundred gram of banana product was used to the functional unit for farm and industrial sections, respectively. The seven clarifications including climate category, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, human toxicity, terrestrial ecotoxicity, freshwater ecotoxicity, and fossil depletion of Thai banana supply chain was calculated. The results presented that the business to business of environmental impact category of banana plantation were the human toxicity from benzene consumption. The reason was partly that the long distance from farm to industry from the transportation. For the environment impact of banana product in the industry process, the result showed that the human toxicity was the main environmental impact from banana plantation as main raw material and electricity consumption in the ripening process. Hence, the alternative energy of fuel consumption and the reduction of banana waste should be proposed for the appropriate approach environmental impact reduction in Thai banana supply chain.

Index Terms— Environmental impact, banana supply chain, life cycle assessment, Thailand.

Cheerawit Rattanapan is with ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Thailand (e-mail: cheerawit.rat@mahidol.ac.th). Weerawat Ounsaneha is with Faculty of Science and Technology, Valaya Alongkorn Rajabhat University under the Royal Patronage, Thailand (corresponding author; e-mail: weerawat@vru.ac.th).

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Cite: Cheerawit Rattanapan and Weerawat Ounsaneha, " Environmental Impact Assessment of Thai Banana Supply Chain," International Journal of Environmental Science and Development vol. 11, no. 7, pp. 341-346, 2020.

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