Poster Session

At the poster session at San Miniato, all of the topics were so interesting that it was difficult to focus on just one. Eventually I started talking to Valentina Niccolucci, one of the researchers, who explained her project to a small group of us. Her project, Assessment of Environmental Aspects Related with a Productive System of Organic Wine, deals with Life Cycle Assessment of wine production. I found this poster presentation to be most interesting because wine has such a large role in Italian culture. Studying the effects of producing it is highly relevant because so much wine is produced in the country.

Life Cycle Assessment is the study of the environmental impacts of a given product. In this study, the researchers used a computer program called GaBi4 to calculate how the environment is affected by an organic wine farm that is located 20 km outside of Siena. The production process was split into four phases: vine planting, grape production, wine production, and bottling. Dividing the process makes it easier to distinguish between the steps of production in order to pick out which steps are less environmentally friendly than the others. When the GaBi4 analyzed the data, the researchers concluded that the bottling and grape production phases have the highest emergy levels. Emergy is the solar energy required to make a product. The data was represented in bar graphs on the poster, showing that grape production has the highest level of emissions, followed by bottling, and vine planting and wine production were far behind. The researchers concluded that re-usable and lighter glass bottles could be used to reduce the environmental impact of the bottling phase. Also biodiesel could be used as a substitute for diesel in grape production. These small changes would have a significant positive impact on the environment so they should certainly be implemented in the wine production process. Italy is such a beautiful country so wine producers should do whatever they can to keep it that way!