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Comparative life cycle assessment of retort pouch and aluminum can for ready-to-eat bean packaging

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Abstract

Since packaging contributes to severe environmental impacts in food production, alternatives of packaging materials that satisfy customer needs while minimizing environmental impacts in a cost-effective manner should be preferred for food product sustainability. This paper compares two different packaging materials (aluminum cans and retort pouches) with a life cycle approach to assess the environmental impacts of ready-to-eat bean packaging. The life cycle assessment (LCA) was used to define and compare the environmental performance of ready-to-eat beans in aluminum cans and retort pouches. The gate-to-gate approach was used in the LCA, with a functional unit of 1 kg of packaged ready-to-eat bean product. Inventory for packaging in retort pouch was created in collaboration with Duru Bulgur Company (Karaman, Turkey) and the data for ready-to-eat beans in the aluminum can were gathered from the literature. The findings show that ready-to-eat beans in retort pouches have lower environmental impacts than ready-to-eat beans in aluminum cans. The packaging and washing processes for both ready-to-eat beans packaged in aluminum cans and retort pouches had the greatest environmental impact. In ready-to-eat beans production, retort pouch provides 87% better environmental performance than aluminum can in terms of global warming (GW). Overall, the results demonstrated that replacing aluminum cans with retort pouches in ready-to-eat bean production can significantly reduce environmental effects in all impact categories.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Abdullah Gül University, Kayseri, 38080, Turkey

    Sedat Gulcimen & Nigmet Uzal

  2. Department of Material Science and Mechanical Engineering, Abdullah Gül University, Kayseri, Turkey

    Ozlem Ozcan

  3. Duru Bulgur, Organized Industrial Zone, Karaman, 70100, Turkey

    Selin Babacan Çevik

  4. Department of Nanotechnology Engineering, Abdullah Gül University, Kayseri, 38080, Turkey

    Kevser Kahraman

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  1. Sedat Gulcimen
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Correspondence to Kevser Kahraman or Nigmet Uzal.

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Gulcimen, S., Ozcan, O., Çevik, S.B. et al. Comparative life cycle assessment of retort pouch and aluminum can for ready-to-eat bean packaging. J Mater Cycles Waste Manag 25, 3723–3733 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10163-023-01791-9

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