Ingrao Carlo, Lo Giudice Agata, Bacenetti Jacopo, Mousavi Khaneghah Amin, Sant'Ana Anderson S, Rana Roberto, Siracusa Valentina
Department of Economics, University of Foggia, Largo Papa Giovanni Paolo II, 1, 71121 Foggia, Italy; Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Catania, Viale A. Doria 6, 95125 Catania, Italy.
Department of Quality and Operations Management, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of Johannesburg, APB Campus, P. O. Box 524, Auckland Park 2006 Johannesburg, South Africa.
Food Res Int. 2015 Oct;76(Pt 3):418-426. doi: 10.1016/j.foodres.2015.07.028. Epub 2015 Jul 22.
Food packaging systems are designed to perform series of functions mainly aimed at containing and protecting foods during their shelf-lives. However, to perform those functions a package causes environmental impacts that affect food supply chains and that come from its life-cycle phases. Therefore, package design should be done based upon not only the issues of cost, food shelf-life and safety, as well as practicality, but also of environmental sustainability. For this purpose, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) can be applied in the packaging field with the aim of highlighting environmental hotspots and improvement potentials, thus enabling more eco-friendly products. In this context, an LCA of foamy polystyrene (PS) trays used for fresh meat packaging was performed here. The study highlighted that the highest environmental impacts come from PS-granule production and electricity consumption. In this regard, the authors underscored that there are no margins for improvement in the production of the granules and in the transport of the material inputs involved as well as of the trays to users. On the contrary, changing the energy source into a renewable one (by installing, for instance, a wind power plant) would enable a 14% damage reduction. In this way, the authors documented that alternative ways can be found for global environmental improvement of the system analysed and so for enhanced environmental sustainability of food packaging systems.
食品包装系统旨在执行一系列功能，主要目的是在食品保质期内对其进行容纳和保护。然而，为了执行这些功能，包装会对环境产生影响，这些影响会波及食品供应链，且源自其生命周期各阶段。因此，包装设计不仅应基于成本、食品保质期和安全性以及实用性等问题，还应考虑环境可持续性。为此，生命周期评估（LCA）可应用于包装领域，以突出环境热点和改进潜力，从而实现更环保的产品。在此背景下，本文对用于鲜肉包装的泡沫聚苯乙烯（PS）托盘进行了生命周期评估。研究表明，最高的环境影响来自PS颗粒生产和电力消耗。在这方面，作者强调，在颗粒生产以及所涉及的材料投入和托盘向用户运输方面没有改进空间。相反，将能源转换为可再生能源（例如安装风力发电厂）可使损害减少14%。通过这种方式，作者证明可以找到替代方法来全面改善所分析系统的环境，从而增强食品包装系统的环境可持续性。
