A recently published Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study by Ramboll has revealed the real environmental impact of single-use packaging versus reusable tableware, finding significant advantages with paper-based single-use products.
The study found that advantages in paper-based single-use products were primarily driven by the carbon emissions related to the amount of energy required to wash the tableware, as well as the amount of fresh water used in the washing process in a multi-use system.
“The environmental impact of energy and water required demonstrates that reusable packaging is not the solution for the foodservice industry,” explains Charles Heaulme, president and CEO of Huhtamaki, a global provider of sustainable packaging solutions.
“Particularly, from a climate change perspective, paper-based single-use packaging results in a lower environmental impact.
“Ramboll’s LCA provides scientific evidence, which policymakers must welcome, as they aim to develop regulation that is good for the planet and has no unintended consequences.”
The full environmental impact was scientifically measured for both applications across multiple criteria and scenarios. The results showed that for climate change, the single-use system shows very significant benefits.
In fact, in the baseline scenario, the polypropylene-based multi-use system was responsible for generating 2.7 times more CO2-e emissions than the paper-based single-use system.
The single main contributor to climate change impact in the multi-use baseline scenario is the electricity demand of the washing process. Overall, the use phase accounts for 83 per cent of the total aggregated impact.
For freshwater consumption, there is also a very significant environmental benefit to the single-use system. The multi-use system used 3.5 times the amount of freshwater in the baseline scenario.
“Climate impact and freshwater consumption are considered the two most critical environmental impact categories today. Water stress is also an issue of growing global importance, with an increasing number of geographies facing freshwater supply issues today,” says Thomasine Kamerling, executive vice-president of sustainability and communications at Huhtamaki.
“Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that policy decisions adopted today take into account both carbon emissions and freshwater consumption, and that all industries and sectors review how they can mitigate their impact.
“We recognise that there are still gaps in the recyclability of packaging that need to be addressed, and that investments in waste management infrastructure are needed to further increase the recycling rates of paper-based packaging, which will further reduce their climate impact.”
In addition to climate impact and freshwater consumption, the LCA study measured environmental impact in the following categories: fossil depletion, particle pollution, terrestrial acidification, freshwater eutrophication, ionizing radiation, metal depletion, and stratospheric ozone depletion.
The study was undertaken by consultancy firm Ramboll and commissioned by the European Paper Packaging Alliance (EPPA).
A summary of the LCA study is available from the EPPA website.
