Towards Integrating Sustainability in the Development of Product/Packaging Combinations

An auspicious approach to increase sustainability of a product/packaging cycle is to investigate the dependencies between the different life cycle phases and corresponding actors. For any actor, the perspective on the global cycle initiates from his own position; therefore, it is required to make the entire life cycle more transparent by showing and interpreting the dependencies as well as the correlations and sensitivities of the different phases in the life cycle. The emerging actor network can serve as a fundament for an approach that allows for the meaningful comparison of various aspects of sustainability during the development life cycles of product/packaging combinations.