Environmental Protection:

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of different types of packaging and their respective recovery solutions

NOK would like, as a foundation for its further work with the optimising of packaging, to make thorough life cycle assessments of different types of packaging. The analysis takes the consumer packaging of jam in either glass or plastic containers as a basis. The project will estimate environmental differences in both use of the different packaging materials and how different waste management affects the total environmental profile for the estimated systems.
The project will try to establish the most efficient packaging and treatment of used packaging, with regard to the environment and the use of resources, and seen in relation to the entire packaging and distribution chain. The analyses are based on methods and tools which satisfy the demands set in international standards (the ISO 14040 series).

Important requirements in the project are the evaluation of the significance of different packaging materials and the waste management of chosen packaging materials in relation to total environmental and resource efficiency. The results will, based on a total analysis, show:

• the importance of different packaging materials, changing from heavy to lighter materials
• the importance of transportation distances
• the importance of different types of waste management of used packaging

The project is a co-operation between Ostfold Research and Vestlandforskning, and will be finished in September 2007.