EU regulation promotes reusable solutions: Study on environmental benefits of reusable packaging for coffee creamers
According to a study by the Fraunhofer Institute, reusable packaging for coffee creamers in the food and beverage industry is often more damaging to the climate than single-serve packaging. This was reported in packREPORT on 5/24/2024. But what exactly is the issue?
Avoiding non-recyclable packaging or replacing it with environmentally friendly alternatives is an important goal on the path towards a sustainable packaging industry. A new EU regulation therefore bans the use of small disposable single-serve plastic packaging for coffee creamers in certain applications. This is due to the fact that they often consist of a polystyrene base film and an aluminum lid, both of which are usually incinerated after use. Reusable solutions are an alternative for the hospitality industry. Fraunhofer UMSICHT has now investigated the advantages and disadvantages of these reusable solutions, such as ceramic jugs or thermos flasks, compared to single-serve packaging, and also considered the environmental impact of food wastage, which can be greater in reusable systems due to hygiene regulations.
For perishable products like coffee milk, these regulations require that unused coffee milk be discarded once it is offered to customers in a jug. That is why Frauenhofer UMSICHT set out to determine the point at which the additional CO2 emissions caused by the wastage of food exceed the additional CO2 emissions generated by the use of small single-serve packaging.
The reusable alternatives considered were 100 ml porcelain coffee pots and 0.5 liter stainless steel thermos flasks, assuming that the milk was transported to the points of sale in 1 liter Tetra Paks.
For the comparison, Fraunhofer also considered innovative single-serve packaging designs, such as those produced by Fernholz: In these designs, the aluminum lid and polystyrene are replaced with polypropylene or recyclable recycled polystyrene (rPS). The result: Reusable systems produce less greenhouse gases than recycled single-use packaging solutions, even without taking food wastage into account.
But what happens if food wastage is taken into account?
To answer this question, the researchers calculated the break-even point as part of their analysis. This indicates the percentage of milk that must be thrown away when using reusable alternatives such that the carbon footprint corresponds to that of the single-use packaging. The range is from 3 to 27 percent, with the lowest value for the polypropylene single-serve option. “The result shows that, depending on the type of packaging, the single-use option can be the solution with the lowest carbon footprint, even with low food losses. While the environmental impact of packaging should be reduced as much as possible, the trade-off in terms of food wastage should always be considered. Environmentally friendly packaging designs, for example through optimized material selection, can be a climate-friendly alternative to reusable systems, depending on the application”, explains Dr. Daniel Maga of Fraunhofer UMSICHT.
(Source: Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology UMSICHT, Osterfelder Str. 3, 46047 Oberhausen, Germany)
The full report can be found here:
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