Life cycle impact assessment of beverage packaging systems: focus on the collection of post-consumer bottles

Abstract Choice of packaging material has a significant contribution to the overall impact of beverage value chain. Collection of post-consumer packaging materials is often controlled by national or regional regulation, which have to be based on sound considerations. Therefore, stakeholders alongside the packaging value chain need for supporting information to select environmentally sound packaging and define own policy. To meet comprehensiveness, five different packaging materials were examined during their whole life cycle. Due to the potentially direct impact of collection system on the human population, and lacking information on such an analysis in recent literature, we were focussing in detail on six bottle collection systems such as kerbside bin, kerbside bag, deposit-refund, combinations with thermal compression of plastic bottles as well as an attempt made toward examining refill-bottles. Recycling allowed saving large amount greenhouse gas emission particularly in the case of aluminium can and glass-bottle. An appropriate managed packaging system supporting the bottle-to-bottle recycling can make aluminium cans beneficial in contrast to small polyethylene terephthalate bottles. From the post-consumer bottle collection point of view, the kerbside bag showed the best results followed by deposit-refund system and kerbside containers. Even though refilling of bottles leads to decreasing greenhouse gas emission, it became less significant after a certain number of reuse. It was shown that the fostering of participation of consumers in collection via aimed policy is highly important. Kerbside bag collection is the most favourable solution, although subtle differences between the distinct selective collection-systems suggested the importance of case-specific examinations. For example, using deposit-refund system resulted in excellent environmental profile, as well, like kerbside bag system. Usage of thermal compressing of plastic bottles in value chain of collection showed large environmental impacts, despite achieving significant smaller volume for transportation, which should lead to lower impacts. Furthermore, usage of refill system has to be deeply analysed to estimate the number of refills and transport distances, which allows maximizing its environmental benefits.