Huhtamaki welcomes new scientific evidence on the real environmental impact of single-use packaging vs. reusable tableware in a recently published Life Cycle Assessment
According to the recently published comprehensive Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) study, paper-based single-use products provide significant key environmental advantages when compared to reusable tableware for in-store dining in Quick Service Restaurants (QSR). These advantages are primarily driven by the carbon emissions related to the amount of energy required to wash the tableware as well as the amount of freshwater used in the washing process in a multi-use system. A recent study conducted by Ramboll, a leading global engineering, design and consultancy company and certified by TÜV, one of the world’s leading testing service providers, compares the environmental impact of paper-based single-use packaging to that of reusable tableware in an in-store dining setting in Quick Service Restaurants in Europe. The full environmental impact was scientifically measured for both applications across multiple criteria and scenarios. Importantly, the results showed that: • For climate change, the single-use system shows very significant benefits. In fact, in the baseline scenario, the polypropylene-based multi-use system was responsible for generating 2.7 times more CO2-e emissions than the paper-based single-use system. The single main contributor to climate change impact in the multi-use baseline scenario is the electricity demand of the washing process. Overall, the use phase accounts for 83% of the total aggregated impact. • For Freshwater Consumption, there are also very significant environmental benefits to the single-use system. The multi-use system used 3.6 times the amount of freshwater in the baseline scenario.