78S5H3MB

2292

5 janvier 2021 17:06

5 janvier 2021 17:06

As plastic pollution globally is gaining increased attention, the use of bio-based plastics, especially in the food packaging sector, is growing in popularity. While this move is regarded as a solution to plastic pollution, it may shift or create detrimental impacts elsewhere in the production, consumption, management system, a possibility that is underexplored. The aim of the present study is to identify the potential challenges and trade-offs related with the introduction of bio-based plastics used in the food packaging industry and highlight issues relevant to policy and decision-making processes. We adopted a whole-system based approach to review the literature and assess holistically the performance of bio-based plastics, considering wider aspects in the environmental, economic, social and technical sustainability domains. We did so, by examining the entire lifecycle of bio-based plastics in the food packaging sector including the production, use, and end-of-life management stages of bio-based plastic alternatives. Based on our findings we developed a sustainability decision matrix, a novel guiding tool, which can provide important insights into the potential introduction of larger amount of bio-based plastics in the food packaging system in the future and support decision-making processes. In conclusion, our preliminary high-level assessment of the bio-based plastics production, use and management system clearly revealed a number of blind-spots across the entire system that are currently ignored by the use of single-dimensional approaches. This highlights that the sustainability assessment of specific bio-based polymers requires thorough and further research that takes into account the type of feedstock, infrastructure availability, and interactions between sustainability domains to ensure that the substitution of petrochemical based plastics with bio-based alternatives in food packaging sector will not lead to unintended consequences.

None

• AB - Utile à l'AB
• FREDO conservation des productions
• FREDO durabilité
• GEO Global
• GEO Quatar
• GEO Royaume-Uni
• emballage
• packaging

• bioplastics
• holistic view
• life cycle
• plastic waste management
• plastics
• sustainability

Journal of Cleaner Production

125378

December 3, 2020

3 décembre 2020

10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.125378 Le DOI est une URL unique de référencement d'une publication. Il est donc plus fiable et permanent qu'une URL classique

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