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
The influence of packaging attributes on consumer behaviour in foodpackaging
LCA studies - a neglected topic
Fredrik Wikström 1 , Helén Williams 1 , Karli Verghese 2 , Stephen Clune 2
1 Karlstad University, Sweden
2 Centre for Design, RMIT University, Australia
Corresponding author. E-mail: fredrik.wikstrom@kau.se
ABSTRACT
It is well known that consumers waste a significant amount of food product and that the functions of packaging can influence how
much food is wasted. Examples include portion sizes, accessibility of the pack and ability to dispense the product. The role of packaging
systems to reduce food waste is rarely modelled in LCA-studies. This means that a packaging system format with a lower
environmental impact, but that causes high food waste, appears to be a better alternative than a packaging system format with a
higher environmental impact, but reduces food waste. This can be contradictory to the purpose of using LCA to reduce the overall
environmental impact of the packaged food product, because food has generally much higher environmental impact than the packaging.
Ensuring that LCA studies of packaged products include associated food wastage across the supply chain can drastically change
the outcome of an LCA study.
Keywords: functional unit, consumer behaviour, packaging,, food waste, life cycle assessment
1. Introduction
Attention to date has seen the focus of reducing the environmental impacts of the sourcing, production
and waste management of packaging materials. This has included lighweighting of materials, changing packaging
system formats, providing different portion sizes and enhancing the efficiency of material and energy
consumption in the sourcing, production and conversion of these materials. Regulatory frameworks including
the Directive on Packaging and Packaging Waste in Europe (European Council, 1994; European Commission,
2006) and the voluntary Australian Packaging Covenant (APC 2010) have provided mechanisms for
the packaging supply chain to rethink the design of packaging materials and formats to reduce environmental
impact. Packaging performs important functions in the provision of food including containment, protection,
distribution, marketing of the brand and dispensing of the product. However, it is known that about 30% of
the food purchased in the industrialised world is wasted by consumers (Engström and Carlsson-Kanyama,
2004; Ventour, 2008; Quested and Johnson, 2009). Understanding the reasons for this wastage and the role
that packaging can play in reducing this waste is important and the remainder of this paper begins to investigate
these reasons.
If LCA methodology is used as a tool to reduce the environmental impact of packaging, the impact on
food waste and possibilities to reduce this should be included. However, the function of packaging to reduce
food waste is rarely discussed in the Packaging Directive (European Council, 1994). Packaging plays an
important role in reducing food waste, as Williams et. al’s (2012) estimated, 20% of food waste in households
could be attributed to packaging (not including food waste of fruit and vegetables due to too little
packaging).
By excluding food waste when estimating the environmental impact of packaging systems means that
packaging with a lower environmental impact that causes high food waste, may appear to be a better alternative
than packaging with somewhat higher environmental impact, but reduces food waste. This is contradictory
to the purpose of using LCA to reduce environmental impacts, because food generally has a much
higher environmental impact than the packaging (Hanssen, 1998). For example, 1 kg of beef has approximately
1,730 times more global warming potential than a 5 g LDPE plastic bag (extrapolated from Eady et
al., 2011, p.1; Ecoinvent 2011). If it was found that the packaging configuration of the plastic bag resulted in
an increase in product wastage, a change in packaging material format to say a rigid plastic tray may be a
better option. It would be important to understand the relationship between packaging format and food waste
to ensure that optimisation of the product-packaging system as a whole is achieved. In this particular scenario,
while a rigid tray would be heavier (e.g., 22 g), if it delivered a reduced product wastage rate then the
overall environmental impact would be lower through savings in beef waste. Williams and Wikström (2011)
found a similar scenario in the case of bread whereby the climate impact of bread packaging could be doubled,
if it led to a reduction in bread waste by 5 percent .
The importance of consumer behaviour in a food LCA is sometimes stated (e.g. Verghese et. al., 2012a)
but seldom included. There can be several reasons for this. The heterogeneous behaviour, including preferences
and conditions among consumers is difficult to handle along with scarce knowledge of how the design
of different food products, including packaging, affects consumer behaviour. However the broader design
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