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Life Cycle Assessment: Principles, Practice and Prospects
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tonnes of waste will be generated per day (Hoornweg 1999), with a shift in waste composition
towards more paper products and a much higher proportion of plastics and multi-material
items. Newspapers, magazines (along with corresponding increases in advertising), fast-serv-
ice restaurants, single-serve beverages, packaged ready-foods and mass-produced products all
mean more waste potential.
The environmental policy response to packaging originates from increasing concern over
rising rates of litter, landfill and material losses from packaging waste. This has led to the devel-
opment of regulations and waste policies by different governments. The underlining focus is a
shift to ‘product stewardship’ – the sharing of responsibility to reduce impacts on the environ-
ment throughout the supply chain. In Australia, New Zealand and the United States of America
(USA) the preferred model is ‘shared responsibility’ while it is more common in Europe to see
‘extended producer responsibility’ (i.e. producers finanically responsible for waste manage-
ment). In the EU, there are binding regulations, such as the Directive on Packaging and Packag-
ing Waste. Accompanying the directive are Essential Requirements such as waste prevention
measures, possible packaging indicators, waste prevention plans, reuse, producer responsibility
and issues related to heavy metal pollution. Other common policy tools include container
deposits and eco-taxes on particular packaging materials. The policy trends in Asia, including
Japan, China, Taiwan and South Korea, are recycling targets, take-back requirements and man-
datory recycling fees or restrictions on particular materials (Lewis 2006).
In Australia, the National Packaging Covenant (NPC) is the voluntary component of a
national co-regulatory approach between government and industry to the LCM of packaging
throughout the supply chain. The scope includes impacts across all stages of production, dis-
tribution, use, collection, reuse, recycling, re-processing and disposal. The NPC aims to
improve the total environmental performance of consumer packaging and distribution pack-
aging, and is underpinned by a regulatory framework, the National Environment Protection
Measure (NEPM) for Used Packaging Materials, which is implemented by each state or terri-
tory government in Australia. The NEPM is designed to deal with non-signatories and non-
compliant signatories. Implemented in 1999, the NPC was reviewed in 2004, and a new
covenant took effect in July 2005 that included key performance indicators (KPIs) and targets
requiring business in all industry sectors to increase their commitment to reducing packag-
ing’s environmental impact, and to provide evidence of achievements and due diligence in
changes to packaging system design. Examples of KPIs for companies include (NPCC 2005):
s changes in the total weight of consumer packaging and the total weight of products
packaged in the Australian market
s changes in the average post-consumer recycled content in packaging
s changes in the total weight by type of ‘non-recyclable’ packaging in the Australian
market
s the amount of consumer packaging in the total waste stream and its relativity to other
waste stream components.
In addition, the Environmental Code of Practice for Packaging (ECoPP), which forms
Schedule 5 of the NPC, has been updated to provide improved guidance on the role and impor-
tance of eco-design within the packaging supply chain.
Such regulations provide a key driver for the packaging supply and waste management chains
– reducing materials used in packaging and reducing the amount of packaging material dis-
carded in landfill. However, the climate change agenda is also now being added to the material
recovery agenda, along with a range of other environmental issues that more traditionally lend
themselves to evaluation using LCA. This provides an initial case for a quick LCA packaging tool.
But what should this tool look like, what functions should it perform, and how?

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