Accounting the Impacts of Waste Product in Package Design

In Life Cycle Assessment (LCA), packaging has been considered environmentally damaging due to its material use and issues with disposal at the end of it life. Consumers’ relationship with packaging is short-lived with the focus of desire being the product contained in the package, and once received the packaging is no longer required and is in certain circumstances a waste management issue. Packaging designers however have long since known the function of the packaging is to deliver the product to the consumer is such a way that the product is protected and possibly enhanced. However, to date packaging design tools which evaluate the environmental performance of packaging design have ignored the product delivery function, or at least considered it to be equivalent in all cases. The packaging quick evaluation tool (PIQET) is expanding its evaluation to incorporate product production impacts, product loss and the disposal of product loss into the life cycle of packaging. As a screening tool, it is not practical to include detailed LCAs of all products, however using environmentally extended input output data to ratio product to packaging impact, it is possible to provide sufficient guidance to the packaging designer as to the benefits or high quality packaging design. This paper presents a case study application of this approach as a proof of concept to its value in the environmental assessment of packaging design.