Concerns about the adverse effects of global warming and
climate change have driven the researches to look into the environmental
impact assessments of various agro-industrial products
throughout their production chains (Lebel and Lorek, 2008). Carbon
footprint (CFP) is one of such approaches introduced as a tool
aiming to quantify and subsequently to mitigate greenhouse gas
emissions from industrial products (Wiedmann and Minx, 2007). It
generally represents the sum of all greenhouse gases released
during the life cycle or part of the life cycle of a product, expressed
as CO2 equivalents (CO2e).
Thailand is one of the main exporters of sugar and sugar products,
in 2008 its sugar exported volumewas ranked 4th in the world
(International Sugar Statistics, 2008). Knowing the contribution of
sugar and related products to the emission of greenhouse gases is
thus important. In Thailand, only one study on CFP of sugar was
performed which reported that the emissions during sugar
production in sugar mills were 0.04 kg CO2e kg1 sugar (TGO, 2010).
A wide range of CFP values of sugar produced from sugarcane
(0.22e0.24 kg CO2e kg1) have been reported (Ramjeawon and
Beedasy, 2004; de Figueiredo et al., 2010). The difference among