A LIFE CYCLE ASSESSMENT APPLICATION OF POLYLACTIC ACID TRAYS PRODUCTION FOR FRESH-FOOD PACKAGING

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) has been significantly improved over the past three decades and now can be considered as a systematic and robust tool allowing for both identification and quantification of the potential environmental impacts associated with product‘s life cycles. LCA is mainly used for product/process selection, design and optimisation and can also be coupled with simulation techniques and design tools, in order to help companies take consciousness of the environmental repercussions of their actions, both on- and off-site. This is what makes LCA an invaluable decision- support tool for the stakeholders like researchers, manufacturers, policymakers and company owners. In this context, this paper discusses about the evaluation of both life-cycle environmental impacts and improvement potentials for micro-level decision in the field of fresh-food packaging Polylactic Acid (PLA) trays.