Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Flexible Packaging Solutions Containing Vacuum Deposited Layers: An Environmental Impact Study

Presented by Gwyneth Spence, Bobst Manchester

Over the past six years, BOBST has been working in collaboration with partners to develop and bring to the market sustainable flexible packaging solutions. Whilst these solutions have been developed in compliance with guidelines and have already been characterised in terms of performance and recyclability, the main focus of this work is to analyse the material solutions and highlight the environmental impacts associated with them over the products life cycle. A Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) will be undertaken providing a comprehensive methodology to evaluate the environmental impacts looking in depth into carbon emissions, freshwater consumption, and energy consumptions.

Furthermore, we will discuss our approach to conducting an LCA along with the functional unit used for this study. The presentation will cover an introduction into the cradle-to-gate methodology used along with the inventory of consumables required to produce the solutions with a larger focus on vacuum metallisation, specifically roll-to-roll metallization using resistively heated ceramic evaporation boats onto which aluminium wire is fed continuously.

Our initial results to our LCA for metallization will be shared within the presentation, along with some background on the LCA software we have chosen for this study.