Innovative smoking technology conserves precious resources
In many regions of Europe, the recent heatwave has further aggravated groundwater levels after the hot summer of 2018. Where the situation is threatening, municipalities, environmental authorities or water suppliers are already calling for the economical use of water. But the population has long since become sensitive to the issue of wasting resources. According to a survey by the German trade magazine “Fleischwirtschaft”, two out of three consumers would like to see agricultural resources used sparingly. This also includes water consumption for smoking food such as meat, fish or cheese.
Compared to conventional smoking (friction or combustion smoke), the innovative smoking process CleanSmoke not only produces safe and healthy products, but also sustainably reduces the burden on the environment. Among other things, about 90 percent water can be saved. The CleanSmoke Coalition (CSC), a joint initiative of manufacturers of primary smoke products, food producers and retailers, has set itself the goal of educating consumers and the interested public about the potential of CleanSmoke technology. When smoking with CleanSmoke, a stable smoke for the smoking chamber is freshly produced from the purified primary smoke condensate.
CleanSmoke needs only one seventh of water
According to a Life Cycle Assessment by the German Institute of Food Technology (DIL), smokehouses using CleanSmoke consume around 37 litres of water per tonne of smoked food for cleaning. The indirect water consumption for plant growth and logging is about seven litres. According to DIL, conventional smoking, on the other hand, consumes 301 litres of water per tonne of meat for cleaning and around 38 litres for growth and harvesting.
If all smoking plants in Germany were to work with CleanSmoke, the consumption for cleaning the smoking machines would be around 66,000 cubic metres (m3) of water, a good 15 percent of which would be used for the production of raw materials. In contrast, indirect consumption for plant irrigation is relatively low at 6,800 m3. With conventional smoking, both direct consumption for cleaning and indirect consumption for irrigation are considerably higher at 545,000 and 357,000 m3 respectively.
According to DIL, cleaning the smokehouses would generate savings of 479.000 m3. That is how much residents of large towns such as Gelsenkirchen or Kiel drink per year. Added to this would be 350.000 m3 of water that could be saved along the supply chain. This would be enough to produce sufficient cotton to make jeans and t-shirts for 35,000 people. Not least for this reason, the CleanSmoke Coalition demands that products smoked with CleanSmoke also be labelled as resource-saving.
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