| Summary: | Purpose: The aim of this article was to perform a life cycle assessment (LCA) of industrial meatballs produced in Malaysia, for evaluating the environmental impacts and discussing the adoption of circular economy (CE) principles. It attempted to fill the research gaps of very less related work reported, unavailability of environmental performance data and less discussion on improvement implications for food production in developing countries. Methods: To achieve the objectives, the midpoint environmental impacts of beef meatballs manufacturing were assessed and analyzed. Primary data were collected from a small- and medium-sized food manufacturing company located in Malaysia. The environmental assessment was grounded on the production of food raw materials and packaging materials and industry-based manufacturing of processed food items as the system boundary. The LCA was conducted using SimaPro 7.3.3 as a software tool and CML-IA baseline V3.05 as an impact evaluation method. Results and discussion: The results found that the farm-based production and industrial cooking of beef are the major sources responsible for the environmental burdens. Comparatively, food-based raw materials were having more damaging impact on the environment than the packaging materials. The use of natural gas for meatballs cooking was found to be another environmental hotspot. In addition, from the packaging viewpoint, polystyrene material was the major contributor towards environmental impacts. Based on the results, the potential solutions and CE principles were recommended and discussed in order to improve the environmental performance. Conclusions: By using LCA, this study identified the environmental hotspots for industrial meatballs production in Malaysia and discussed the potential adoption of CE principles in order to reduce the environmental burdens. © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023.
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