Page 127 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

chapter 5: the carbon footprint of ecuador’s banana
Table 33 Inventory data: port of entry (per tonne)
Inputs
Outputs
Item
Amount
Item
Amount
Fuel: diesel1 0.37 l diesel Fuel combustion 0.98 kg CO Electricity MV1 1.38 kWh emissions2
Source: AEBE (2013)
2
Figure 38 Transoceanic (blue line) and road (green line) transportation to final destination in Spain
Source: http://www.searates.com/reference/portdistance/
assumed as Mercamadrid, near Madrid, Spain, which is the major perishable food distribution complex in the world. Transportation from Mercamadrid to the port in Rotterdam represents 1 714 km. (Figure 38).
2.3 Ripening
The bananas are collected in Ecuador when they are still green and ripening take places at destination under controlled conditions for consistency. Subsequent
to a quality control check, the pallets are placed in special rooms where the ripening of the fruit is encouraged by controlled temperatures and the application of ethylene to accelerate the natural ripening process. Biogenic CO2 is generated during the process and the rooms are ventilated to prevent the concentration of CO2 from reaching 1 percent, which would hinder the ripening process.
The data for this stage (Table 34) includes the electricity and ethylene as outputs, as well as the wasted bananas (0.52 percent of total bananas during
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