Methods for the Assessment of Environmental Sustainability of Packaging: A review

Abstract

Growing awareness for environmental issues and stricter legislation increases the pressure on
producers to address these issues. In particular, packaging is under scrutiny, because it is perceived
as a major contributor to waste streams and resulting environmental problems.
This review provides an overview of the existing tools used to assess the environmental impacts
of packaging. While a full life cycle assessment (LCA) is an appropriate tool to assess the impacts
of a well-established product, simplified LCA allows a quick and less detailed assessment during,
for example, the design phase of a certain product. Furthermore, scorecards are capable of
addressing pre-selected environmental aspects of packaging. Whenever applying simplified LCA
or scorecards, the inevitable trade-off between accuracy and user-friendliness has to be considered.
Nevertheless, a careful selection of the indicators to be assessed and a good understanding of the
packaging system allow results to be meaningful even with these simplified tools.