Flexible plastic coffee pack stands-up to LCA assessment

04 Apr 2019 --- The Flexible Packaging Association (FPA) has determined that the most eco-friendly coffee packaging is the stand-up flexible plastic pouch. Tested across six Life Cycle Assessments (LCAs), flexible pouches demonstrated more favorable environmental attributes than steel cans and rigid plastic containers in terms of carbon impact, fossil fuel usage, water usage, product-to-package ratio, as well as the amount of packaging material going to the landfill.

The LCA coffee analysis was conducted using EcoImpact-COMPASS LCA software, which allows for quick LCAs between different packaging formats. The coffee analysis made up part of a larger FPA report designed to highlight the sustainability benefits of flexible packaging, entitled A Holistic View of the Role of Flexible Packaging in a Sustainable World.

The analysis found that the steel can uses 16 times as much water as the stand-up flexible pouch, mainly during the material development stage, as large amounts of water are used during the cooling process in the formation of steel. The rigid plastic canister consumes 2 times as much water as the stand-up flexible pouch due to water usage during the injection molding process.

The production of steel cans and the rigid canister both require much more energy and have higher carbon emissions in the manufacturing or conversion stage. The carbon impact is lower for a lighter weight stand-up flexible pouch that holds more of the product and uses less material. The rigid canister and steel can respectively emit 4 times and 7 times more greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions than the flexible pouch.

A flexible pouch has been found to require lower overall fossil fuel usage. A steel can and rigid canister respectively use 453 percent and 518 percent more fossil fuel than a stand-up flexible pouch.

The stand-up pouches success in the LCA was partly driven by its comparatively low use of packaging material, which results in a favorable product-to-package ratio. According to the US EPA Waste Hierarchy, the most preferred method for waste management is source reduction and reuse.

The report explains that while many flexible packaging formats are not yet recovered and recycled in any significant amount, they still result in a substantial reduction in the amount of material sent to landfill versus other types of packaging.

For the HDPE canister to have the same net discards as the flexible pouch package, the recycling rate for the HDPE canister would need to jump from 34 percent to 84 percent with a 70 percent recovery rate for the lid.

The recycling rate for the steel can would need to increase from 71 percent to 93 percent and the LDPE lid would need to go from 21 percent to 75 percent for the steel can to have the same amount of landfilled material as the stand-up flexible pouch.

Standing up for plastics
Growing public discontent and intensifying regulatory action against plastic packaging – including the recently approved EU ban on the 10 most polluting single-use plastic items – has led the plastic industry to reiterate the net environmental benefits of the material.

Hubbub UK’s Founder & CEO, Trewin Restorick, warns that the industry must avoid “knee-jerk” reactions to anti-plastic sentiment. He also stresses that the public has become “obsessed” with the end of the production line without thinking about the full carbon impact of packaging materials in relation to each other.

“The fact that people are moving away from plastic bottles to aluminum cans to store water just seems absolutely crazy to me when you consider the impact of mining and the amount of energy used to create the aluminum,” Restorick tells PackagingInsights.

Likewise, Joanna Stephenson, Managing Director of PHD Marketing, believes that plastic packaging is being “continuously vilified” in comparison to carton, paperboard or renewable materials.

“If consumers understood that, for a typical family of four, simply using one tank of petrol in their car less per year is the equivalent of their total annual use of plastic packaging, the situation might improve,” Stephenson explains to PackagingInsights.

Barry Turner, Director for Plastic and Flexible Packaging at the British Plastics Federation (BPF), supports these comments. “When people look at what the alternatives [to plastics] bring and the impacts that they have, I think that’s when the plastics concern starts to be eroded somewhat. Actually, the alternative materials require far more resources than plastics and therefore have a less beneficial overall effect on the environment,” he tells PackagingInsights.

The FPA LCA is one of a growing number of studies advocating the net environmental benefits of plastics in comparison to the material alternatives. For example, a recent study by the American Chemistry Council (ACC) found that plastics are more sustainable than the material alternatives in terms of energy use, water consumption, solid waste, GHG emissions, ozone depletion, eutrophication and acidification.

Similarly, a team of 40 academics at Heriot-Watt University, UK, published a study in November 2018 which concluded that a ban on plastics could actually increase damage to the planet.

By Joshua Poole