STORA ENSO OYJ Fruit and vegetables are the centerpiece of today's grocery stores and often the first department that customers experience when walking in the door. Visually appealing produce signals quality and freshness, and for brand owners and retailers, it is critical that fruits and vegetables arrive undamaged. With fruit and vegetable loss already as much as 50% throughout the value chain, strong packaging can play a role at minimizing this by preventing damage to fresh produce.
Producers and sellers have high expectations for packaging reliability and at the same time seek to balance this with increasingly ambitious sustainability measures. This includes combating food waste and reducing their packaging's environmental impact. In the fruits and vegetables category, retailers and brand owners are commonly presented with a choice between recyclable corrugated containerboard packaging and reusable plastic crates. Both offer protection, but how can they know which is the most sustainable choice?
To help our customers better understand the options and their potential environmental impacts, we recently conducted a Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) comparing corrugated containerboard box to a reusable plastic crate for transporting fresh produce. The study considers all life cycle stages including resource extraction, packaging production, transportation, and end-of-life. Below, we discuss our findings.
The study's scenarios explained
The LCA studied the packaging types in two scenarios where loose fruit is transported in different areas: 1.) citrus transported within
Based on interviews with plastic crate industry experts, we assumed the following about the plastic crates:
A lifespan of 6 years and reused approximately 4 times per year
100% return rate
2.5% breakage rate
The packages were assessed across 13 common impact categories, including climate impact (i.e., carbon footprint), resource use (e.g., fossil resources, minerals, and metals), and water consumption.
For both scenarios, in each impact category, we sought to determine a break-even point; in other words, how many times the plastic crate would need to be re-used to achieve better environmental performance than containerboard?
How to choose the right fiber-based product? Talk to us.
Retailers and brand owners of fresh produce demand packaging that holds up to the rigors of transportation, meets their sustainability requirements, and looks good on the shelf or floor. Retailers can take advantage of corrugated containerboard's low climate impact and ability to protect produce while offering appealing visual features, as with AvantForte WhiteTop by
Part of the global bioeconomy,
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