Ecolabelling for improving sustainability of agri-food supply chain: An experimental implementation of the Made Green in Italy scheme on the hard sheep milk cheese

Unsustainable food supply chains are sources of relevant environmental impacts and strongly contribute to the depletion of non-renewable resources. Ecolabelling is one of the measures for increasing market awareness of the sustainability of a product and encourage the implementation of low-input practices along the food production system. Made Green in Italy (MGI) scheme is an initiative based on the PEF method and aimed to reward Made in Italy products with high environmental profile. A screening study was conducted on four Sardinian dairy plants to develop an experimental MGI application on the hard sheep milk cheese supply chain, using Pecorino Romano PDO as reference product. Sheep milk phase resulted the main contributor for all relevant impact categories (over 94%). Benchmark score (1.33E-05 Pt) was calculated adding the normalized and weighted values of the 3 main relevant impact categories (Climate Change, Land Use and Water Scarcity). Three performance classes were defined considering the best and the worst values of life cycle processes: upper threshold was equal to 1.62E-05 Pt and lower threshold was equal to 1.17E-05 Pt. The relevant sheep milk impact highlighted the crucial role of sheep farming systems for improving the environmental footprint of the Pecorino Romano PDO.