Abstract
PurposeToday plastic is the most used material for food packaging, but its incorrect disposal is creating environmental issues to oceans, soil and air. Someone believes that the solution is to ban plastic and substitute it with glass packaging. Is it the right choice? This study aims at comparing the environmental impact of bottles made of PET, R-PET, non-returnable glass and returnable glass in order to understand which is the most environmental friendly packaging solution.MethodsA literature analysis on the environmental impact of glass and PET bottles is carried out, taking into account their production, transport and disposal phase. Then, an environmental assessment of PET, R-PET, glass and returnable glass bottles, used to package 1 l of pasteurized milk, has been carried out using the life cycle assessment methodology and a new indicator. Inventory data were provided by an important milk processing and packaging factory located in Italy. Results were estimated using some relevant impact categories of the ReCiPe 2016 MidPoint (H) method, then a marine litter indicator (MLI) has been proposed in order to evaluate the polluting potential of milk bottles dispersed into the Mediterranean Sea.Results and discussionLCA results show that R-PET bottle gives the lowest contribution to global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, fossil resource scarcity, water consumption and human carcinogenic toxicity, followed by PET bottle, returnable glass bottle, and finally non-returnable glass bottle. Glass is the worst packaging option because of high energy demand in the bottle production and its weight and in the transport phase. Some improvements can be obtained with returnable glass, but even if we consider that a bottle could be reused eight times, results are not comparable to the PET or R-PET bottles used only once. However, according to the MLI, returnable glass bottles become the first option, because a lot of plastic bottles could potentially be dispersed into the sea.ConclusionsThe substitution of plastic with glass does not help to reduce the GWP and others LCI categories, while could contribute to reduce the marine litter: overall it is important to dispose correctly packaging materials, investing in recycling and reusing. In particular, great improvements can be obtained using bottles made with recycled materials, as R-PET. In conclusion, it is necessary to disadvantage waste dispersion, giving incentives to returnable packaging and raising people awareness of environmental problems.
Highlights
The global plastic production continued to increase rapidly because it is versatile, hygienic, flexible, highly durable and suitable for many applications (Plastic Europe, 2019)
In order to compare an eight-time reusable bottle to the PET, recycled PET (R-PET) and glass bottle used only once, it is supposed that the impact generated by a glass bottle in one single use is the sum of all the abovementioned impacts in its eight uses life cycle, divided by eight
Results of Life cycle assessment (LCA), according to the selected impact categories, demonstrate that R-PET bottle contributes less to global warming, stratospheric ozone depletion, terrestrial acidification, fossil resource scarcity, water consumption and human carcinogenic toxicity than PET bottle, while non-returnable glass bottle give a higher contribution to the considered environmental problems than polymeric bottles
Summary
The global plastic production continued to increase rapidly because it is versatile, hygienic, flexible, highly durable and suitable for many applications (Plastic Europe, 2019). Plastic can take thousands of years to decompose: bottles, bag, cups, thrown into the sea break down, thanks to the waves, into little pieces smaller than 5 mm called micro-plastic, that are very dangerous to the maritime flora and fauna (Min, et al, 2020). Life cycle assessment (LCA) is one of the most adopted method to assess the environmental impacts associated with the life cycle stages of a product or a process, from raw material extraction, product’s manufacture, distribution and use, up to the final disposal (European Commission, 2003). Our ultimate goal is to understand which packaging material is more environmental friendly between plastic and glass, considering all the phases, starting from the production up to the final disposal. The study was carried out in collaboration with an important factory located in Italy expert in milk processing and packaging, responsible to provide most of the inventory data for the LCA
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