Life Cycle Assessment of Seedless Salak in Syrup in Chanthaburi

The study reveals that Chanthaburi is the largest Salak cultivation province, considered as 65 percent of the total Salak plantation area in the country. Seedless Salak in syrup is developed as an alternative to preserve Salak, which can increase its value ready to be distributed to the market while supporting its future growth. It is obvious that seedless Salak in syrup has become one of the most important economic fruit products of Thailand. In analyzing the result of general conditions of seedless Salak in syrup weighed 450 grams distributing to 95 percent of middlemen and directly to 5 percent of consumers, the major problem is resulted from the off-season production of raw materials, causing a drastic change in price that severely affects the production costs. In 2013, a total cost was estimated at 426,303 baht per year or 40.5 baht per unit and the return of seedless Salak in syrup gains a total profit of 173,679 baht per year, equal to 16.5 baht of profit per unit. Creating the value for quality and reliability is highly important in boosting the value of the product involved in this research, resulting in the study of the life cycle of Chanthaburi’s seedless Salak in syrup. With the use of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), it encounters 2 types of environmental impact assessment based on Carbon Footprint and Water Footprint. The assessment is developed as a means to evaluate the degree of environmental impacts and help in cost reduction towards redundant processes and resources. Also, the assessment will increase productivity and capacity of the product to be highly competitive in the global market while creating great opportunity for Thailand to sparkle in the global market as well as to support the arrival of AEC in the very near future. The study also reveals that seedless Salak in syrup with the net weight of 450 grams will contain the amount of the carbon footprint and the water footprint at 477.34 grams (g CO2-eq)and 274.17 liters (L H2O-eq), respectively.