Life cycle assessment framework and use it for comparative analysis of liquid packaging

Abstract

The growing issues of increased emissions and carbon footprint has made governments and industries think about sustain ability aspect of their products and services. Organizations around the world have started focusing on sustainable policies for growth and development as their primary agenda. The packaging sector is one of the focal point ofthis change with high environmental burdens. Liquid product packaging leaves significant environmental impact when comparing their greenhouse emissions, water emissions and energy consumption. Unique aspect of the problem is that most of the packaging is used only once during its lifetime which adds to the problem. Life cycle assessment (LCA) systematically analyses the potential environmental effects of goods and services throughout their life cycle, i.e., from raw material through disposal. LCA covers various relevant aspects such as input as a raw material (land use, oil, water) and emissions which result in pollution (soil, water, air) and we would be using this framework to analyse the environmental loads of liquid packaging. In this project, comparative study of PET packaging for a 1L bottle and a glass bottle of 1L packaging is performed to assess the environmental impact.