Environmental Impact of Secondary Packaging : A Lifecyle Assessment of Milk Powder Packaging in Sri Lanka

The study has been carried out with the main focus of measuring the negative environmental impacts of milk powder secondary packaging throughout its lifecycle. The selected secondary packaging is a 400g full cream milk powder carton. In addition to that, calculating the monetary saving results along with environmental saving by avoiding milk powder secondary packaging are also focused in the study. For this purpose, a Life Cycle Assessment was conducted. The boundary was from cradle to grave. The declared unit used is one 400g milk powder carton. The assessment was done using SimaPro faculty version software and ReCiPe 2016 is the characterization model used for generation of endpoint damage categories and midpoint impact categories. The primary data was gathered through interviews with managers and executives in milk powder manufacturing and printing industries. According to the results obtained, the highest impact of the life cycle of milk powder secondary packaging is on marine organisms and the environment. Freshwater ecotoxicity, Human non-carcinogenic toxicity are the next highest impacts of the milk powder carton life cycle. Damage to Human Health, Resources and Ecosystem can be reduced by 93.57 DALY, 1,839,960 USD 2013 and 0.205 species.yr. respectively by eliminating milk powder secondary packages from Sri Lanka. It is an annual saving of Rs. 1.8 billion from consumer perspective and Rs. 1.5 billion from manufacturer perspective. Adopting a minimalist approach in packaging and switching for locally sourced packages can be recommended to reduce the negative environmental impact. As per the future research recommendations, it can be suggested to quantify the direct and indirect benefit that a manufacturer and a consumer receives by practicing minimal secondary packaging for products