Green strategies to reduce the environmental impact of jam production

Food operations management is the most impactful driver of global environmental challenges, including global warming, climate change, water pollution and loss of biodiversity. According to recent studies, food production systems efficiency and food loss are leading causes of environmental degradation. Although many methodologies to assess the environmental impact of food production have already been investigated, there is an urgent need to provide environmental evaluations in the fruit sector focusing on the most widespread industrial production processes and their corresponding impact. In this context, the operations management in jam production represents one of the most critical issues. Generally, in the most common jam production systems, energy-intensive treatments, including chemical substances, are adopted to extend the shelf-life of the raw materials or finished products, allowing to increase the process performance in terms of production levelling, inventory management, and market policies. In many cases, this approach compromises the sustainability of treatments, reducing the corresponding environmental performance. This paper aims to analyze the most common processes for jam production, comparing their environmental performances and the effects of the related centralized/decentralized strategies to be adopted. The potential impact categories of each process phase have been assessed. Results led to identifying the jam production from fresh fruit by adopting a decentralized production strategy, the best option considering the environmental performance under production capacity constraints.