 | Jon DettlingUsername: JonDettling |
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Ecointesys - Life Cycle SystemsComments
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Dear Trace, Rather than
Dear Trace, Rather than recycling, I would suspect that it is waste-to-energy that is helping out the carton in this case. I haven't seen the details of this particular study, but the fact that it was conducted in Germany and assumed European conditions indicates to me that they would have assumed a fairly high number of the containers are converted to energy (incineration), which is quite common across much of Europe and extremely common in some European countries, such as Germany. For an item like these cartons, it would be a much more favorable process than trying to recycle them into new cartons. One must therefore be careful in not over-interpreting the results and assume that the findings are universally applicable. The results could be very different in the US where we convert a much lesser portion of waste into energy and recycle some things, such as aluminum cans, at a reasonably high rate (~60%). It would be interesting to see the results adjusted for such changes in conditions to see how they might differ. It would also be interesting to see them include a plastic container in their comparison. Jon Dettling Ecointesys - Life Cycle Systems www.ecointesys.com
Tom, This is a common
Tom, This is a common question, but it's not possible to have an answer for it. Is recyclable or likely-to-be-recycled material better than non-recyclable? In most cases. Is lesser packaging material better than more? In most cases. Is recyclable better than less packaging? It's impossible to say without full knowledge of the context and doing the necessary (life cycle) assessment to put all the pieces together. You will get a different answer in different contexts and to try to make a categorical rule will likely lead you astray as often as it will help. In fact, in some cases it may be heavier weight packaging or packaging of a less recycled material that is the best option because we must also consider how well it protects the product, the impacts of which producing can be tens to thousands fold greater than for the packaging. Packaging, as we all know, is a complicated system that serves a very important function. We need to consider all aspects of that system and also the system that it is protecting to understand what will really be a "green" packaging in that context. Stoneyfield's container may be very good for their yoghurt, but I wouldn't suggest they try to sell eggs in it and making it more recyclable or lighter weight won't make it a greener eggs packaging. That being said, in Stoneyfield's case they made sure the necessary homework was done (by some former colleagues of mine at Michigan's CSS, http://tinyurl.com/cxwzaj) to understand all the trade-offs involved in choosing among the available materials and feasible design options. In this case, it pointed toward a container with a less-likely-to-be recycled (a more accurate term for PP than unrecyclable) material. The analysis also suggested that they would help the environment (and their bottom line) by not including a plastic overcap above the foil tops on the 8oz containers, which many others in the industry have followed. However, the cap is still there on the 32oz size, even though the impacts of just producing the packaging would be much less if they got rid of it. The reason being that at that size, it's necessary to protect the product, which if wasted has much more impact on the environment than the jug. There are certainly many case studies that would indicate a different type of conclusion. If we turn these case study results into rules-of-thumb and stop thinking critically about the systems in question, we may be right in some cases, but will be wrong in many others. Jon Dettling, www.ecointesys.com