Environmental benefits of material-efficient design: a hybrid life cycle assessment of a plastic milk bottle

Pomponi, Francesco; Li, Mengyu; Saint, Ruth; Lenzen, Manfred; D'Amico, Bernardino

Abstract

Over a million plastic bottles are bought around the world every minute, 20,000 every second. While there is agreement that single-use plastics should be phased out, records of plastic pollution point in the opposite direction. Until the phasing-out of single-use plastics materialises, there is an immediate opportunity to mitigate the environmental impacts of plastic use through better design, that is to improve material efficiency without affecting function or performance. In this article, we focus on a standard plastic milk bottle, which we redesign based on a previously developed shape factor for the sustainability of forms, achieving a ~13% material reduction. Environmental benefits are evaluated globally through hybrid life-cycle assessment (LCA) both in the 10 countries in which the original plastic bottle is used and the other 22 countries upstream in the supply chain. Results obtained through hybrid LCA are 17.3% higher than those obtained through process-based LCA. Environmental benefits arising in the 22 countries in the upstream supply chain are twice as much as those observed in the 10 countries where the original bottle is used. Overall, our findings show a potential annual reduction of ~1.9 Mt CO2e, equivalent to approximately 415,000 cars taken off the road, thus proving the substantial and viable benefits that can be achieved by material efficiency through redesign.

Citation

Pomponi, F., Li, M., Saint, R., Lenzen, M., & D'Amico, B. (2022). Environmental benefits of material-efficient design: a hybrid life cycle assessment of a plastic milk bottle. Sustainable Production and Consumption, 30, 1044-1052. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2022.01.028

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 28, 2022
• Online Publication Date: Jan 31, 2022
• Publication Date: 2022-03
• Deposit Date: Jan 28, 2022
• Publicly Available Date: Feb 1, 2023
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 30
• Pages: 1044-1052
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2022.01.028
• Keywords: process-based; input-output; hybrid; life cycle assessment (LCA); plastic; waste; HDPE; optimisation; design
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/2838798
• Publisher URL: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/sustainable-production-and-consumption