Assessing environmental trade-offs in packaging systems for infant formula delivery: A cradle-to-gate plus end-of-life life cycle assessment

An LCA study was conducted comparing three packaging systems to deliver infant formula, including primary (plastic, composite, and steel containers), secondary (corrugated box), and tertiary (pallet) levels, all manufactured and distributed in North America. The project goal involved quantifying each system's environmental footprint (EF), evaluating the effect of end-of-life (EoL) modeling in LCA results, and interpreting trade-offs among environmental impact indicators. The functional unit was defined as a packaging system delivering 1000 g of infant formula from cradle-to-gate, plus EoL. The three packages, including EoL, were modeled using SimaPro 9.3.03, with TRACI 2.1 V1.06 Midpoint being the primary impact assessment method. The LCA was performed according to ISO 14040/14044 standards. EoL models included the cut-off method, the 50/50 allocation, and the circular footprint formula (CFF). The stochastic multi-attribute analysis (SMAA) method was implemented to evaluate the trade-offs among the midpoint indicators. The primary package significantly contributed to the three systems in all the evaluated categories. Adjusting the EoL models influences the overall results when comparing the packaging systems' impacts. Contributions in each category vary slightly, with minimal changeover from the highest or lowest package footprints in EoL models. The SMAA ranking preference for all EoL methods indicates that the plastic container is preferred, having the lowest EF with >50 % probability. Environmental impacts of the packages involved trade-off discussion. With the initial EoL methodology (cut-off method), Package 1 (plastic) shows the highest impact in 4 of the 10 impact categories, Package 2 (composite) in 2 of the 10 categories, and Package 3 (steel) in the remaining 4 categories. With the 50/50 allocation and CFF EoL methodologies, different conclusions were reached about the impacts of each package; however, SMAA results found that ranking of the packages within EoL methodologies did not change the conclusions that the plastic package is preferred.