Fleischverpackungen bewertet durch Life Cycle Assessment in Kombination mit Shelf-Life-Modelling

This study presents a methodological approach for integrating shelf life and consumer behavior into LCA using a case study of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) for minced meat. A first functional unit was set to “environmental impact per packaging of 500 g of minced meat sold”. The aim of the study was to quantify the “over- and under-packing” of the packaging system related to its shelf-life and environmental impacts. Ad-ditionally, the packaging-related food losses caused by exceeding the shelf life as well as their related environmental impacts should be quantified. The approach proposes to conduct a consumer survey on purchasing and consumption behavior to establish a log-normal distribution of the consumption of a purchased food product (in days since purchase). A probability value is assigned to a specific day, indicating the likelihood of the meat being consumed by that day. Consequently, the probability of the product not being consumed can also be determined. The environmental impacts of the packaging (as well as later the environmental impacts of the product) are divided by the consumption prob-ability value to fulfill the functional unit two
“environmental impact per packaging of 500 g of minced meat sold that is expected to be consumed within the modelled shelf life”. The packaging system consists of a polypropylene (PP) tray and a low-density polyethylene (LDPE) multilayer film with varying tray thicknesses, gas compositions, and ethylene vi-nyl alcohol (EVOH) content in the lid film. Results show that when only the packaging is considered, the tray significantly contributes to the environmental impacts across all cat-egories while MAP and LDPE film do not cause significant contributions in most impact categories. An increase of the tray thickness leads to higher overall environmental im-pacts. When reducing the tray thickness while also considering shelf life and consumer behavior, the shelf-life is shortened. Scenarios with shorter shelf lives demonstrate in-creased environmental impacts. The inclusion of the product reveals an inverse effect, with lower tray thickness resulting in reduced shelf-life and increased food
losses, lead-ing to higher environmental impacts. Caused by the shorter shelf-life an increased pro-duction of meat (and packaging) is necessary to fulfill the third functional unit “environmental impact per 500 g of minced meat sold and packaged that is expected to be con-sumed within the modelled shelf life". The production of minced meat contributes signif-icantly to the overall environmental impacts, considering shelf life and consumer behavior.