Abstract
Purpose
The environmental impact, resource use and waste generation of packaging has been a topic of worldwide debate. This resulted in founding the Netherlands Institute for Sustainable Packaging (KIDV), which aims to facilitate the reduction of these impacts. Within KIDV’s scientific programme, an LCA-based tool was developed to show packaging design students the underlying causes of this impact. Researchers can assess packaging chain alternatives with the tool, which is presented in the first part of the paper.
Methods
The LCA-based tool, EnvPack, encompassed three consumer products: non-carbonated beverage, shower gel and ready-to-eat soup. Each product had three to four different packaging alternatives. The packaging cradle-to-grave life cycles were defined in terms of materials and processes and included detailed parametrisation of the end-of-life. Packaging-related product losses have been included in EnvPack. For the impact assessment of the product-packaging combinations, four methods were included, each with a different perspective. These were a modified ReCiPe midpoint method, ReCiPe endpoint, cumulative energy demand and a Circular Economy method based on ReCiPe. Packaging for material analysis was collected at Dutch supermarkets. For establishing packaging-related product losses, explorative measurements were made. Microsoft Excel was used to construct EnvPack.
Results and discussion
Researchers and design students can select up to four different packaging alternatives per product, including one self-designed packaging. Packaging-related product losses can be included or not in the assessment. For the beverage, an out-of-home consumption situation can be selected, which affects the end-of-life of the packaging. The contribution of several life cycle stages and of impact categories are presented as graphs for the design students; detailed tables are available for researchers. The tool compares two assessment methods at a time. The effect of different methods on the ranking of the packaging alternatives is a topic of the second part paper.
Conclusions
In comparison with existing LCA-based packaging tools, EnvPack includes four different assessment methods that all offer a single score comparison of alternatives. EnvPack is freely available for participating Dutch universities.
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Acknowledgements
We thank colleagues at Wageningen Food & Biobased Research and TNO for participating in explorative consumer behaviour experiments. Niels Jonkers (IVAM consultancy, Netherlands), Katarina Nilsson (SP Technical Research Institute of Sweden), Martina Krueger and Mirjam Busch (ifeu, Germany) are thanked for participating in the external review.
Funding
The study, made within the ‘Sustainable Packages’ project, received funding of the Top Institute Food & Nutrition, the Netherlands Institute for Sustainable Packaging KIDV and TNO.
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Ligthart, T.N., Thoden van Velzen, E.U. & Brouwer, M. EnvPack an LCA-based tool for environmental assessment of packaging chains. Part 1: scope, methods and inventory of tool. Int J Life Cycle Assess 24, 900–914 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1530-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11367-018-1530-0