## 3 Results
### Spatio-Temporal Environmental Impacts in the EU Milk Supply Chain
For instance, Denmark and Finland demonstrate a notable decrease in climate change impacts, indicating that using RFID technology to reduce milk loss has effectively lowered greenhouse gas emissions. This trend is associated with the enhanced transparency and efficiency of the supply chain, reducing the need for additional production caused by expiration or waste. Furthermore, the result analysis shows a clear trend of annual improvements, particularly in freshwater and marine eutrophication, as well as terrestrial eutrophication. This reflects that, with the hypothetical use of RFID technology in the supply chain, harmful emissions during logistics and storage processes have been reduced. These environmental benefits are likely linked to the increased efficiency of product management brought by RFID, which reduces resource waste and pollutant emissions. The five western EU countries (Figure 4) show a declining trend across multiple environmental impact categories, including climate change, water resource depletion, and land use. Particularly, the Netherlands and France demonstrate significant year-by-year reductions in climate change and particulate matter impacts. This suggests that the hypothetical deployment of RFID technology could mitigate these environmental burdens by reducing waste and improving supply chain efficiency, resulting in net positive environmental outcomes. The color coding, ranging from pink in 2015 to light pink in 2023, visually represents the variations in environmental impacts across different years. Figure 7: Estimated environmental impacts associated with RFID tag usage in the fresh milk supply chains of five Eastern European countries—Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, and Romania—from 2015 to 2023. All values are expressed in \(\times\)1000 tonnes of potential impact equivalents. Note: data were unavailable for Lithuania during 2015–2017 and for Latvia during 2015–2016. For instance, between 2016 and 2019, impacts such as photochemical ozone formation and human toxicity (non-cancer effects) showed some fluctuations across countries, but overall impacts have decreased significantly since 2020. This consistent decline indicates that the introduction of RFID technology can help control environmental burdens despite variations in policy enforcement across different years. The data show missing information for Germany from 2015 to 2017, which introduces certain limitations in analyzing changes during this period. However, from 2018 onwards, Germany exhibits significant reductions in multiple categories, particularly in water resource depletion and land use. Given that Germany is one of Europe's largest milk producers, this trend could be linked to the potential of RFID technology to enhance supply chain efficiency. Besides, Belgium shows noticeable improvements in freshwater and marine eutrophication, particularly after 2018, with significant reductions in eutrophication impacts. This trend may be associated with enhanced supply chain transparency and reduced milk loss due to RFID technology. Moreover, Austria's acidification and terrestrial eutrophication indicators have significantly decreased since 2019, suggesting that RFID technology could help mitigate harmful emissions in production and supply chain activities. The Netherlands demonstrates a marked reduction in mineral, fossil, and renewable resource depletion, especially from 2021 to 2023, highlighting the benefits of sup  
Figure 8: Spatial distribution of environmental impact reductions associated with RFID-enabled milk waste in the EU fresh milk supply chain (2015–2023). ply chain optimization in reducing resource dependence, potentially related to minimized waste-driven production demands. Significant reductions are observed across key environmental impact categories, such as climate change, particulate matter, water resource depletion, and acidification in France, the Netherlands, and Belgium.