Preventing Environmental Impacts of Products by Proper Packaging Conclusions from LCA case studies as main rationale for packaging designer toolbox

摘要

A toolbox is being developed to support packaging and product designers, when assessing environmentalimpacts of the entire value chain of the food product. One main rationale of the project is to minimiseenvironmental impacts of food products by suitable packaging. Environmental impacts of three foodproducts (bread, ham, Soygurt drink) and their packaging alternatives with recovery options are assessed byLCA in separate case studies. One unique element within these case studies was a consumer survey on theamounts of food waste of the selected product groups generated at households, as a function of different sizesof packaging. The results of our study show that the amount of food waste is found to be a dominating factorwhen comparing environmental impacts of different food packaging solutions and this observation is amongmain rationales of the toolbox.