Page 131 - Ecuador's Banana Sector under Climate Change

chapter 5: the carbon footprint of ecuador’s banana
Figure 40 Ecuadorian banana sold in a Spanish hypermarket
©/Authors
in hypermarkets (Boletín de Información Comercial Española, 2011). Banana is sold at room temperature in various presentations (Figure 40).
Table 39 includes the energy consumption, taking into account the various types of retailer. Account of the values of electricity and natural gas, reported by Tassou et al. (2010), are
also taken into account, where the following assumptions have been made: (i) banana is sold in bulk, (ii) one tonne of banana occupies 5 m2 of surface and (iii) the fruit remains at the retailer for three days.
On the output side (Table 40), the primary packaging materials are removed at the retailer (i.e. plastic bag and cardboard box) and disposed of, according to the information provided in Table 35. In Spain, 5.6 percent
of perishable foods are lost at the retail level (MAGRAMA, 2012); 20.5 percent of this amount is donated to NGOs, assumed for consumption; and the remaining 79.5 percent is discarded. With regard to the current economic difficulties that Europe is facing, however, a significant portion of the discarded amount is being gathered by poor people from the retailer’s back door and, therefore, it is assumed to be also consumed. In any event,
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Table 39
Electricity and natural gas consumed at retailer
Retailer type
Area (m2)
Av. area Sales (m2) fraction1
Energy use (kWh/m2/a)2
Av. energy use (kWh/ m2/a)
Av. energy use (kWh/t)
Natural gas consumption (kWh/m2/a)
Av. gas consumption
Av. gas consumption (kWh/t)
Grocery stores
<400
200 0.46 1.450 0.44
1.500 1.000
0 200
Supermarket
400-2500
1212
49.81
112.13
4.61
Hypermarket
>2500
6.250 0.10
800
250
Source: 1 Boletín de información comercial española (2011); 2 Tassou et al. (2010)