Environmental life cycle assessment of production of the non-nutritive sweeteners aspartame (E951) and neotame (E961) from chemical processes: The SWEET project

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

Documents

  • Fulltext

    Final published version, 2.42 MB, PDF document

  • J. Suckling
  • S. Morse
  • R. Murphy
  • M. Raats
  • S. Astley
  • J. C.G. Halford
  • J. A. Harrold
  • A. Le-Bail
  • E. Koukouna
  • H. Musinovic
  • Raben, Anne
  • M. Roe
  • J. Scholten
  • C. Scott
  • C. Westbroek

Consumption of added sugar is a cause of concern due to links with non-communicable diseases. Non-nutritive sweeteners (NNSs) are increasingly seen as a viable alternative. Health and safety of NNSs are well studied, but not their environmental impact. In this study the environmental impact of NNSs aspartame and neotame are presented. This is the first such study attempting to quantify environmental impact of neotame. Life cycle data are derived from literature, alongside stoichiometric reaction equations and resulting heat changes. Global warming potential (GWP) of 1 kg aspartame is found to be 29.25 kgCO2-eq/kg, and 1 kg neotame to be 43.42 kgCO2-eq/kg. It is found that both NNSs have great potential to replace the sweetness of added sugar with reduced environmental impact, e.g., GWP of neotame is found to be 0.4–0.7%, and aspartame 10.5–18.4%, of an equivalent sweetness for sucrose. This study demonstrates that environmental impact of the additional resources required to make neotame from aspartame are more than offset by the increase in perceived sweetness, from 200 to 8000-times. It is shown that there are significant uncertainties related to life cycle inventory data and data derivation method. Therefore, this work further highlights the difficulties of conducting a life cycle assessment of highly refined industrial food additives and the need for good industrial collaboration in obtaining data.

Original languageEnglish
Article number138854
JournalJournal of Cleaner Production
Volume424
Number of pages14
ISSN0959-6526
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2023

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors

    Research areas

  • Added sugar, Aspartame, Life cycle assessment, Neotame, Non-nutritive sweetener

ID: 389670144