Work

Eco-Designing Convenience Food: A Monte Carlo Product Environmental Footprint Assessment of Dry, Fresh, and Instant Pasta Systems

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: The global pasta industry is increasingly challenged to reconcile consumer demand for convenience with the need to reduce environmental impacts across the food supply chain. This study presents a cradle-to-grave Product Environmental Footprint (PEF) assessment integrated with Monte Carlo stochastic simulations to evaluate four durum wheat (Triticum durum) semolina pasta systems: traditional dry pasta, fresh pasta, instant pasta in a rigid cup, and an eco-designed instant pasta in a flexible pouch. Systems were evaluated using a primary functional unit of 1 kg of commercial product and normalized to an isocaloric serving to account for variations in moisture content and preparation. When evaluated across the full cradle-to-grave system boundary, traditional dry pasta (1.91 ± 0.08 kg CO2e/kg) and flexible-pouch instant pasta (1.72 ± 0.08 kg CO2e/kg) achieve comparable, lowest overall impacts, while the rigid cup format (3.85 ± 0.17 kg CO2e/kg) is heavily penalized by packaging mass intensity and transport inefficiency. Industrial starch pre-gelatinization creates a porous structure enabling rapid passive rehydration (0.90 kWh/kg domestic energy), which fully offsets factory thermal inputs (0.326 kWh/kg) and dramatically outperforms traditional stovetop boiling (2.40 kWh/kg). Crucially, replacing rigid cups with flexible pouches reduces total packaging material mass per kg of net pasta product by 72.5% (279.8 g/kg vs. 1016.2 g/kg), avoiding severe volumetric logistics penalties. Conversely, fresh pasta incurs the highest Climate Change impact (4.14 ± 0.17 kg CO2e/kg) due to continuous cold-chain distribution and storage requirements. Overall, this work demonstrates that shifting thermal energy processing from domestic preparation to factory pre-gelatinization—when combined with ambient shelf stability and lightweight flexible packaging—provides a promising eco-design strategy to decarbonize convenience foods, subject to commercial validation of packaging barrier performance and consumer acceptance.

Source: Sustainability

DOI: 10.3390/su18178712

Author: Mauro Moresi

Institution: Università degli Studi della Tuscia

Language: English

Topic: Environmental Impact and Sustainability

Subfield: Environmental Engineering

Field: Environmental Science

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDGs: Responsible consumption and production, Climate action, Zero hunger

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $2,896