Cartons in comparison with reusable glass bottles

A state-of-the-art envi­ron­men­tal life­cy­cle assess­ment (LCA) has con­firmed that sin­gle-use bev­er­age car­tons com­pare favourably with reusable glass bot­tles – and out­per­form sin­gle-use PET bot­tles – across the fresh milk, juice and UHT milk mar­ket segments.

The results of the crit­i­cal­ly reviewed LCA study are based on an in-depth analy­sis of the Ger­man bev­er­age pack­ag­ing mar­ket, with expert review and over­sight by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency (UBA). The con­clu­sions are glob­al­ly rel­e­vant and sup­port the find­ings of pre­vi­ous crit­i­cal­ly reviewed LCAs that bev­er­age car­tons offer envi­ron­men­tal advan­tages to alter­na­tive forms of pack­ag­ing for liq­uid dairy and juices.

SIG Chief Exec­u­tive Offi­cer Rolf Stan­gl com­ment­ed: “The lat­est LCA con­firms once again that bev­er­age car­tons are the pre­ferred envi­ron­men­tal choice for milk and juice pack­ag­ing. The high pro­por­tion of renew­able con­tent in sin­gle-use bev­er­age car­tons puts them on a par even with glass bot­tles that can be reused mul­ti­ple times. These results are based on stan­dard bev­er­age car­tons that are around 75% renew­able and SIG already offers cus­tomers inno­v­a­tive prod­ucts that are linked to up to 100% renew­able content.”

Rigorous assessments for informed decision-making

SIG is a mem­ber of the Ger­man Bev­er­age Car­ton Asso­ci­a­tion FKN, which com­mis­sioned the LCA study to sup­port informed deci­sions on pack­ag­ing by food pro­duc­ers, con­sumers and pol­i­cy­mak­ers based on a robust sci­en­tif­ic com­par­i­son of envi­ron­men­tal impact.

The LCA was con­duct­ed by the Insti­tute for Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Research (IFEU) in accor­dance with the recog­nised ISO 14040/44 inter­na­tion­al stan­dards. It is the first study to meet the new require­ments stip­u­lat­ed by the Ger­man Fed­er­al Envi­ron­ment Agency (UBA) for bev­er­age pack­ag­ing life cycle assess­ments in Germany.

Benedikt Kauertz, Sci­en­tif­ic Direc­tor at IFEU said: “IFEU sup­port­ed the UBA in devel­op­ing its min­i­mum require­ments for LCAs for bev­er­age pack­ag­ing. The study com­mis­sioned by FKN is the first to imple­ment these require­ments and adopt such a robust approach. The results show that bev­er­age car­tons for milk and juice are advan­ta­geous com­pared with sin­gle use PET bot­tles. For milk, bev­er­age car­tons are even bet­ter than the ref­er­ence sys­tem, reusable glass bot­tles, and for juices bev­er­age car­tons per­form on a par with the ref­er­ence sys­tem. For UHT milk, where no reusable pack­ag­ing option is avail­able, bev­er­age car­tons per­form bet­ter than the sin­gle-use PET bot­tle alternative.”

Environmental advantages of cartons confirmed

Reusable pack­ag­ing options, such as glass bot­tles that are returned to food or bev­er­age pro­duc­ers to be used again, are often assumed to be the best option for the envi­ron­ment. That is why reusable options, where avail­able for a par­tic­u­lar mar­ket, are used as the ref­er­ence sys­tem for comparison.

Based on an in-depth analy­sis of all three mar­ket seg­ments – fresh milk, juices and UHT milk – the bev­er­age car­ton per­forms at least as well, or in the case of fresh milk, even bet­ter than reusable glass bot­tles. The lat­est study also con­firms that both bev­er­age car­tons and reusable glass bot­tles out­per­form PET bot­tles for fresh milk, juice and UHT milk. Where no re-usable sys­tem is installed, bev­er­age car­tons are clear­ly advantageous.

Car­tons per­form sig­nif­i­cant­ly bet­ter than the alter­na­tives on cli­mate change – the cat­e­go­ry giv­en high­est eco­log­i­cal pri­or­i­ty by the UBA. The cli­mate impact results for car­tons are 78% low­er than reusable glass bot­tles for fresh milk, 37% low­er than reusable glass bot­tles for fruit juices and 71% low­er than PET bot­tles for UHT milk (for which no reusable options are available).

The high pro­por­tion of renew­able mate­r­i­al used to make bev­er­age car­tons – 75% on aver­age – con­tributes to their strong envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance, togeth­er with their high­ly effi­cient design which reduces impacts from trans­port and dis­tri­b­u­tion. The favourable results are under­pinned by the industry’s com­mit­ment to sourc­ing from respon­si­bly-man­aged forests.

LCAs support responsible product innovation

LCA is fun­da­men­tal to SIG’s robust approach to prod­uct respon­si­bil­i­ty and informs the focus of the company’s prod­uct inno­va­tion. This lat­est study con­firms the impor­tant con­tri­bu­tion that renew­able mate­ri­als make to the excel­lent envi­ron­men­tal per­for­mance of bev­er­age car­tons and SIG is work­ing to increase the pro­por­tion of renew­able con­tent in its packs. SIG’s Eco Plus pack is 82% renew­able and its Sig­na­ture Pack 100 is the only asep­tic bev­er­age car­ton to be linked to 100% for­est-based mate­ri­als, using an inno­v­a­tive mass bal­ance approach. These inno­va­tions are part of SIG’s com­mit­ment to go Way Beyond Good by putting more into soci­ety and the envi­ron­ment than it takes out.