The pressure on the packaging sector to examine its environmental footprint has never been higher. There has always been a belief in the packaging sector that the environmental impact of packaging has been greatly exaggerated and this seems to have been proven by a new Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of food products. The LCA, also known as eco-balance, creates a picture of foil packaging for food from field to plate. The evaluation of the environmental performance of packaging usually concentrates on a comparison of packaging materials. Other aspects including sustainable consumption and production of packed goods are often neglected. The same applies to the functional role of flexible packaging, which is the distribution of goods to society to satisfy human needs. Broader approaches, which focus on the life cycle of packed goods, including the entire supply system and the consumption of goods, are necessary to get an environmental footprint of the food supply system with respect to sustainable production and consumption. And as the only reason to produce packaging is to enable the consumer to consume products the relevant question from a sustainability point of view can be only to optimize the sustainability along the total supply chain of consumer goods rather than focussing on parts of it. The three main targets of these studies are: - the investigation of the environmental performance of foil packaging with respect to its function within the life cycle of goods, i.e. within the supply chain and consumption of goods,
- the investigation of the role of foil packaging in view of resource efficiency and prevention of spoilage of packed goods, and
- the investigation of the environmental relevance of stages and interdependencies within the life cycle of goods while taking consumers' patterns and portion sizes into consideration.
In fact packaging contributes to minimising environmental impact by reducing spoilage and over consumption.
To reach these findings a series of case studies were undertaken including flexible packaging for coffee, butter, and roast in household foil. Download here the executive summaries:  "COFFEE LCA - family pack and portion pack" (2008)
"BUTTER LCA - family pack and portion pack" (2008) "ROAST LCA - household foil" (2008) "YOGHURT LCA - cup with foil lid" (2009) "CHOCOLATE LCA - foil paper wrap" (2009) "LASAGNE LCA - foil container" (2009) "WINE LCA - screw cap" (2010)
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