Authors: Elisa Uhlig, Anna Sadzik and Mara Strenger, Sustainable Packaging Institute SPI, Albstadt-Sigmaringen University
In December 2023, the EU-funded projet BioSupPack organised a workshop alongside the European Bioplastics Conference – EBC23 on the topics: “The next challenge in packaging: How to choose between different bio-based polymers? How can Life Cycle Assessments be used to evaluate their ecological sustainability? What are the challenges on sustainability assessments for bio-based polymers and how can they be overcome?”. With an open discussion with several participants, the workshop was led by BioSupPack’s project experts, Mara Strenger, Anna Sadzik, Elisa Uhlig (ASU) with the support of Chiara Bearzotti and Estela Lopez-Hermoso (European Bioplastics).
The BioSupPack project aims to develop new, competitive, high-performance and biobased packaging solutions based on Polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs), obtained from brewer’s spent grains, and to produce them on a large scale. As part of the project, a workshop was held to identify the challenges in implementing sustainability assessments for biobased polymers and how to overcome them. The challenges (in italics) have been identified per category. Potential solutions were suggested during the interactive workshop and are provided in the text below.
General factors of sustainability assessment: Sustainability assessments are time-consuming, costly snapshots and isolated observations. The initial investment in resources may be higher, but the payback is worth it as the results can lead to longer-term reductions in resource use, e.g. by identifying hot spots along the life cycle and identifying opportunities for improvement. Less time-consuming activities are for instance screening assessments or hotspot analyses.
Methodology: Sustainability assessments are often based on assumptions. Assumptions should be as close to reality as possible (e.g., for packaging, consider its functionality in terms of product protection) and documented tra