LIFE-CYCLE ASSESSMENT FOR SUSTAINABLE WINE PRODUCTION

ECO-PROWINE is a pioneer initiative in which partners from Austria, Bulgaria, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain participate, with the purpose of reducing the environmental and cost impacts and increasing the visibility and competitiveness of more than 100 pilot wineries from these countries. The main goal of the ECO-PROWINE project is offering a unique frame (methods and tools) which permit the environmental impact reduction caused by the wine sector of the UE as well as reinforce and make their products more attractive under the base of a sustainable labelling. ECO-PROWINE delivers a Life Cycle and Cost Assessment (LCA - LCC) on-line tool, tailored to the wine-making sector, that enables wine makers (possessing no expertise in LCA methodologies) to perform a self-assessment of their wine-making process, in order to accurately detect environmental charges, impacts and costs through an user-friendly and appealing interface which allowing wine-makers to fill in the requested information and get detailed results about the environmental performance and the sustainability of their wine-making process. The online self-assessment tool identifies problematic areas in the wine-making process and suggests improvement actions in order to minimize the environmental impacts of the winery operation. The wine-maker will have to commit to performance improvement in order to certify his products with the ECO-PROWINE label. By committing to performance improvement the winery will acquire the ECO-PROWINE label. Keeping the label can be achieved upon periodic validation of improvement activities.