Environmental impact of a new industrial process for the recovery and valorisation of packaging materials derived from packaged food waste

In Italy, most of the packaged food wasted during the distribution phase and at retail stores is disposed of in landfill, due to the absence of a sorting system able to separate food from packaging. A new experimental process, here presented, collects the packaged food waste from retailers, moves it to distribution centres, and then ships it to a sorting facility where the food is separated from its packaging. The sorted packaging materials are then sent to specific recycling or energy recovery centres, meaning that only a small amount of packaging material is disposed of in landfill. In this study, the environmental performance of this innovative process is compared with the impacts generated by disposal in landfill using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) methodology. Data for the year 2015 in the Emilia Romagna region (Italy) was collated for this purpose; in this region, about 14,600 tons of food are wasted in the retail channel annually. The LCA is performed using the ReCiPe midpoint method; primary data was taken from the field, while secondary data came from literature and ecoinvent 3.3 databases. Three sensitivity analysis were carried out to evaluate the results when the distances covered during the transport phase, the composition of the packaging waste, or the EOL of the country where the analysis is performed varied. Overall, the results show that the innovative scenario is more environmentally sound than the one currently in use. Taking into account the avoided impacts, the environmental impact turned out to be negative in all the categories, suggesting a beneficial effect on the environment.