UNESCO Chair in Life Cycle and Climate Change ESCI, UPF, Passeig Pujades 1, 08003 Barcelona, Spain.
Sci Total Environ. 2021 Jun 1;771:145322. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2021.145322. Epub 2021 Jan 23.
The ever-increasing volume of packaging waste is widely recognised as a key global environmental challenge. Packaging is thus a central concern for advocates and analysts of circular economy (CEc), who often apply the life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology when measuring the environmental impacts of products and packaging. We undertook a systematic literature review as a research method, and in-depth analysis to ascertain the extent to which the new CEc paradigm has been integrated in LCA methodology applied to beverage packaging and reported in scientific papers. Carefully developed search strings returned 866 articles relevant to our enquiry from the databases of SCOPUS and Web of Science. Applying our selected eligibility criteria, we extracted a subset of 51 articles for in-depth analysis. The analysed literature shows the links between the quality of packaging material for recycling and the profoundness of the LCA studies. The paper provides the following set of recommendations for enhancing the future practice in development of the scientific LCAs for beverage packaging: (i) taking all direct and indirect factors into account when assessing the refillable beverage packaging system and conducting break-even analysis in order to achieve impartial comparative assessments of single-use and refillable systems; (ii) developing proxies in cases when actual data is lacking with which to model the recycling scenarios for exported secondary materials and hence improving the accuracy of recycling rate assessments in LCA models; (iii) improving the definition of the LCA function by introducing multiple loops of the packaging material and assessing qualitative changes in the material resulting from the multiple-recycling process. Thus improved practice of LCAs could better inform and improve the design of new packaging strategies aimed at prolonging the life of packaging materials in the technosphere, equally fulfilling the principles of the CEc.
日益增长的包装废物量被广泛认为是一个全球性的环境挑战。因此，包装是循环经济（CEc）的倡导者和分析师关注的核心问题，他们在衡量产品和包装的环境影响时，通常会应用生命周期评估（LCA）方法。我们采用系统文献综述作为研究方法，并进行深入分析，以确定新的 CEc 范式在应用于饮料包装的 LCA 方法中以及在科学论文中的融合程度。精心设计的搜索字符串从 SCOPUS 和 Web of Science 的数据库中返回了 866 篇与我们的查询相关的文章。应用我们选择的入选标准，我们提取了 51 篇文章进行深入分析。分析后的文献表明了包装材料的回收质量与 LCA 研究深度之间的联系。本文提出了一系列建议，以提高未来开发饮料包装科学 LCA 的实践：（i）在评估可重复使用饮料包装系统和进行盈亏平衡分析时，考虑所有直接和间接因素，以实现对一次性和可重复使用系统的公正比较评估；（ii）在缺乏实际数据来模拟出口二次材料的回收情景时，开发代理，从而提高 LCA 模型中回收率评估的准确性；（iii）通过引入包装材料的多个循环，并评估多次回收过程中材料的定性变化，改进 LCA 功能的定义。因此，改进的 LCA 实践可以更好地为旨在延长包装材料在技术圈中的使用寿命的新包装策略提供信息，并改进其设计，同时满足 CEc 的原则。
