Owens-Illinois (O-I) has released the results of a global study of the complete life cycle of glass containers.
According to O-I, its life cycle assessment (LCA), which measures the carbon emissions generated by each phase in the life of a glass container, is foundational to the company’s sustainability program.
O-I’s study examines the complete life of a packaging from the extraction of raw materials to the reuse or recycling of the container. The model used for the study also allowed an assessment of cradle-to-cradle life cycle data on aluminum and plastic Polyethylene Terephthalate (PET) containers.
“Many assessments used today only take into account a portion of the full life cycle of a product, resulting in incomplete and inaccurate data. Customers are sometimes unknowingly making packaging decisions based on incomplete data,” said O-I CEO Al Stroucken.
O-I used manufacturing and publicly available data on the production of aluminum and PET to compare glass with these other packaging materials. O-I’s life cycle assessment model was tested and validated by AMR Research, a firm specialising in supply chain and sustainability research.
“Our assessment shows that glass clearly has the most favorable carbon footprint,” said Jay Scripter, O-I vice president of sustainability.
The O-I life cycle assessment also found that transporting finished glass containers comprises of only 4 to 5 per cent of the complete carbon footprint of glass packaging while using recycled glass directly reduces the amount of energy needed to extract and process raw materials.
Every 10 per cent of recycled glass used in production cuts carbon emissions by about 5 per cent and reduces energy use by 3 per cent.
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