The Monetarized Footprint Index of paprika

Abstract

The Monetarized Footprint Index (MFI) of paprika powder grown in either Israel or India and packed in plastic jars or bags in Israel was obtained from land, water and carbon footprints under a life-cycle perspective. It was found that although the shipment distance of the paprika powder from India to Israel is relevant, a high demand for irrigation water in Israel plus the fact of the water's source from a relevant carbon footprint reverse-osmosis desalination process led to higher footprints of the Israeli products cultivated and packed there compared to India. In addition, packaging in jars required much more PET compared to bags. Thus, the growth of the pepper in India and the use of PET bags instead of jars was the best scenario, yielding MFI of 0.51 €•kg−1. Moreover, considering the difference in cost-of-living and environmental performance between the two countries led to significant differences between the normalized MFI values of the Israeli and the Indian-sourced product. For example, normalizing the MFI based on the Gross Domestic Product per capita gives results which reveal that all the scenarios have similar scaled normalized values (167±17). In contrast, the use of Big Mac Index and Environmental Performance Index for normalization highlights the scenario of growth of the pepper in India and use of PET bags as the clear best performer.