Abstract: While historically life cycle assessments (LCAs) of food and beverage
packaging have focused upon comparative assessment of different packaging
material formats and confi gurations, there is an increasing awareness that the
LCA impact of the ‘content’ i.e., the food or beverage, has a greater impact on
the overall product packaging system than the packaging materials. The growing
interest among multinational brandowner companies and retailers to implement
sustainable packaging strategies and systems is also driving a refi nement in
evaluation tools, metrics and indicators. This new direction will see the
development of the need for organisations to implement action-oriented decision
making using life cycle thinking to improve the design of the product packaging
system.
Key words: action-oriented decision making, environmental packaging evaluation
tools, food and beverage packaging, food and beverage packaging design, LCA,
life cycle assessment, life cycle thinking, packaging sustainability, sustainability.