Milkfish (Chanos chanos) is one of the main commodities in Kendal District – Middle Java Province - Indonesia. It is produced for spiced boneless milkfish by some smallmedium enterprises. Level of energy usage, emission release, and environmental impacts caused during the production need to be assessed for improvement in these industries. A common method for assessing energy usage and environmental impacts from industrial activity is Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) or ISO 14040. This study used LCA to assess energy, emission and environmental effect of the life cycle of spiced boneless milkfish production. The research was conducted at three small-medium enterprises in Kendal District namely; UKM Ratu Bandeng, UKM Bandeng Kendal, and UKM Rozal Bandeng. The product life cycle started from purchasing raw and supported materials, boneless processing, spiced boneless processing and storage of finished products. Energy measurement was taken place at all energy used during the production, such as human energy, energy from fuel and gasoline and electricity. The released emissions were measured in CO2, SO2, and NOx. The results depicted that energy needed to produce 1 kilogram of spiced boneless milkfish was 18.456 MJ for UKM Ratu Bandeng; 18.188 MJ UKM Bandeng Kendal and 23.985 MJ for UKM Rozal Bandeng. The emission released was 227.666 g CO2; 0.333 g SO2; 2.713 g NOx in UKM Ratu Bandeng; 607.459 g CO2; 0.513 g SO2; 4.434 g NOx in UKM Bandeng Kendal; and 1132,938 g CO2; 0,941 g SO2; 8.101 g NOx in UKM Rozal Bandeng respectively. Wastewater was produced from the material cleaning process and rest of boiling water, while solids waste were scrap from the materials, such as raw and additive materials, and packaging materials. Recommendations for improvements in these industries were as follow; selection of supplier which was closer to the location of production, use of more efficient production equipment, improvement of production process design, and build tanks and infiltration basin for waste water disposal.
Keywords: Emissions, energy, LCA, spiced boneless milkfish.