Single-use Supermarket Food Packaging and its Alternatives: Recommendations from Life Cycle Assessments

Food packaging’s ever-increasing reliance on single-use plastic formats along with the persistence of plastics in the environment, adds to the long-reaching – and as yet poorly characterized – impacts of plastic pollution on ecosystems and human health. The need for alternatives to single-use packaging is clear. This report compares the environmental impacts of single-use plastic packaging versus alternative options for supermarket food, intended for home consumption. The report is part of a series of meta-analyses of Life cycle assessment (LCA) studies that provides recommendations to policy makers on alternatives to commonly used single-use plastic products. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a well established tool for assessing the potential environmental impacts associated with a product or service across its whole value chain.