LCA Food 2012 in Saint Malo, France! - Manifestations et colloques ...

PARALLEL SESSION 3B: PACKAGING 8 th Int. Conference on LCA in the
Agri-Food Sector, 1-4 Oct 2012
To model the carbon footprint of the different packagings the Umberto for carbon footprint software was
used (Fig 2).
Figure 2. Life cycle carbon footprint flow for plastic pouch. Umberto for Carbon footprint v1.2 ®
For the rigid plastic container, 63% of the carbon footprint came from raw materials, mostly polypropylene.
The rigid plastic container’s three components, a polypropylene cup, an aluminium lid and a polypropylene
cap and fork. For the carbon footprint of the rigid plastic container the polypropylene cup represents
24%, the aluminium lid 17%, and the polypropylene cap and fork 22%. For the flexible plastic pouch, 60%
of the carbon footprint came from raw materials. For the flexible aluminium pouch, 95% of the carbon footprint
came from raw materials, and the aluminium is 30% of the carbon footprint of the product. The corrugated
box is 20% of the carbon footprint of the product. The corrugated cardboard box used to ship packaged
products it is about 30% of the carbon footprint of all the different packages. The mass of the empty corrugated
box is 255 g and holds only 23 flexible packages, 23 rigid containers, or 48 cans. The aluminium can
have the largest carbon footprint, while the rigid plastic container and flexible plastic pouch had the lowest
carbon footprints (80% and 60% lower than the aluminium can, respectively) (Fig. 3).
100%
90%
80%
70%
60%
50%
40%
30%
20%
10%
0%
Aluminium
Container
Rigid Plastic Flexible Flexible
plastic 100% Aluminium
Disposal
Distribution
Raw Materials
Figure 3. Relative carbon footprint of the “packaging able to hold 180 g of sausage”.
4. Discussion
One important consideration for eco-design packaging is the marketing study. It will be a starting point
for future eco-designs. The marketing study related to multiple aspects of public perception must be translated
into design variables to achieve effective consumer satisfaction with the new packaging. The main cos-
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