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¹ Matís ltd. – Icelandic food and biotech R&D, 113 Reykjavík, Iceland
² Faculty of Economics and faculty of Environmental and Life Sciences, University of Iceland, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland DOI : 10.4194/1303-2712-v17_1_10 Viewed : 4490 - Downloaded : 5077 This study utilized Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to quantify the environmental impacts of 1 kg of live-weight Arctic char, cultivated in an Icelandic land-based aquaculture farm. The functional unit included assessments of three different feed types; standard feed with high inclusion levels of marine ingredients (Conv.), experimental feed with high inclusion levels of agricultural ingredients (ECO) and a hypothetical Black soldier fly larvae based feed (BSF). Results of the study indicated that the feed production causes the greatest environmental impacts from all feed types considered. The Black soldier fly based feed demonstrated the best environmental performance of the three feed types. Furthermore, it can be concluded that by increasing agriculture based ingredients at the cost of marine based ingredients, a better environmental performance can be reached. This study demonstrated the importance of feed production for aquaculture in terms of environmental impacts and showed that byoptimizing feed consumption, reducing the amount of fishmeal and fish oil and even creating new types of feed from novel ingredients, the overall impacts of aquaculture can be greatly reduced. Keywords : Aquaculture, Arctic char, Life cycle assessment, fishmeal replacement, insect feed, Iceland