Abstract
PurposeThe importance of glass in the production of food packaging has stimulated the assessment of its impact. This study evaluates the environmental performance of hollow glass production in a manufacturing plant operating in Apulia (Italy), compares baseline and two alternative scenarios based on the life cycle assessment (LCA) method and proposes more environmentally friendly options.MethodsThe LCA study was performed on primary data provided by a company for 2017 and secondary data retrieved from databases. The LCA was conducted according to ISO 14040:2006 and 14044:2018 with product category rule (PCR) basic module CPC 37. A midpoint approach was chosen. The software selected for the analysis was GaBi thinkstep AG version 8.7.0.18. The study was performed from cradle to grave, and the functional unit considered was 1 kg of finished hollow glass.Results and discussionA comparative analysis of the different scenarios was conducted considering seven environmental impact indicators. The results highlight major improvements in the environmental impact indicators: in particular, the replacement of raw materials with cullets would yield significant improvements if all of the cullets are recovered in the regional territory. These improvements, as confirmed by the results of Scenario 2, could be further increased both by the use of renewable energy such as photovoltaic (PV) energy and by technological improvements such as lightweighting.ConclusionsThrough the LCA, the authors quantified the potential environmental impact associated with the production of hollow glass, thereby identifying solutions and formulating suggestions to reduce the environmental impacts associated with food packaging. The evaluation of the different scenarios could help managers in the decision-making process, thus improving the environmental performance of both the process and final product.
Highlights
In recent decades, we have witnessed a constant growth in the world population, which implies a greater demand for food production (Caldeira et al 2019)
From the analysis of the results, alternative scenario 2, characterised by the use of cullets, lightweighting and PV energy, improves all environmental indicators, as shown in Fig. 6: when the baseline scenario and scenario 2 are compared, the reduction in the first four impact indicators is very large, ranging from 52% of the Photochemical ozone creation potential (POCP) to 62% of the Global warming potential (GWP), whereas in the comparison of Scenario 1 and the baseline scenario, small improvements are observed in all impact indicators, ranging from 4% of the ADP elements to approximately 44% of the Acidification potential (AP)
In comparison with the baseline scenario, the results revealed a slight reduction in the environmental impacts in terms of the following indicators: the total water depletion decreased by 8.6% under scenario 2, where the core phase showed the greatest reduction of 25%; the total ADP elements were reduced by approximately 4% under scenario 2, and the total ADP of fossil fuels revealed a reduction of over 12% under Scenario 2, affected by the reduction at the core phase of 39%
Summary
We have witnessed a constant growth in the world population, which implies a greater demand for food production (Caldeira et al 2019). Food packaging exerts direct and indirect environmental impacts on the supply chain (Molina-Besch et al 2019). Considering that packaging has to preserve food ingredients and nutrients throughout the product journey along the supply chain (Del Borghi et al 2016), the challenge for many researchers is the determination of alternative, innovative and technologically advanced solutions that can help minimize its associated environmental impacts. Int J Life Cycle Assess (2021) 26:785–798 interactions with food (Kobayashi 2016a). For these reasons, glass containers have been adopted for many years for both food and beverage packaging (Franco and Falqué 2016)
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