The European Commission obligates the member states to
harmonise the waste management and implement the waste hierarchy
in national regulation (EC, 2008a). It means to prefer the
waste prevention, re-use and material recycling to incineration or
landfill. Furthermore, the directive on packaging wastes requires
the recycling of packaging materials by up to 45% (EC, 1994).
Considering that the above-mentioned EC/98/2008 directive
stresses the importance of human health protection in waste management, a comprehensive life cycle assessment (LCA) might
be necessary to find environmental hot-spots in the packaging
value chain.