(160e) Towards Circular Food Supply Chains: Integrated Design of Food Packaging and Waste Management Infrastructures

Plastic production, consumption, and waste have globally grown exponentially over the past decades.¹ Around 35-40% of the plastic produced worldwide is destined for packaging, a percentage that is projected to rise in the coming years. ² Packaging plays a crucial role in food supply chains guaranteeing quality and food safety, extending the product’s shelf-life while avoiding food waste, and facilitating food access. Nevertheless, most of the food packaging becomes waste after a single use contributing to multiple environmental impacts like water, land, and air pollution that threaten ecosystems, wildlife, and humans. Beyond traditional waste management technologies like mechanical recycling, incineration, and landfilling, new promising technologies are being explored to tackle complex plastic waste. Among the different packaging types, multilayer plastic films are commonly used, as they offer improved properties for preserving products using less material than the monolayer alternatives. However, multilayer plastic films cannot be recycled using conventional technologies due to their complexity, therefore, they require new technologies that are more energy and/or resource-intensive (e.g., dissolution-based processes like STRAP^TM, pyrolysis),³ or emitting more greenhouse gases (e.g., incineration). The tradeoffs present, from the production to the waste management of packaging, lead to the need for the consideration of the entire food and packaging supply chain for the optimal design of food packaging and waste management infrastructure.

Food supply chain studies generally exclude packaging from their system of interest and within a few specific studies, there is a lack of a broader scope that analyzes different types of packaging along with different recycling technologies.⁴ These studies analyze food packaging or recycling technologies focusing either on the packaging alternatives design or the comparison of different recycling technologies.⁵ Some of them use a techno-economic analysis (TEA) to evaluate the feasibility of their alternatives and/or use a life-cycle assessment (LCA) as the methodology to determine the most environmentally friendly alternative. However, in our previous work, we have found that a further assessment is required to address a bigger array of environmental impacts beyond greenhouse gas emissions.⁶

To identify the optimal waste management infrastructure for food packaging, a complete analysis that includes existing waste management technologies and the potential implementation of new facilities and technologies is required. In this work, we aim to identify the best combination of packaging, waste management technologies, and the required infrastructure. Therefore, we propose a systems engineering framework based on multi-objective optimization that will help to analyze the different packaging alternatives and the potential waste management technologies for packaging and the food waste associated. We will illustrate the proposed framework on a case study focusing on the packaging of roasted coffee, involving a variety of packaging option types including monolayer and multilayer plastic films, rigid containers, glass, reusable glass, and metal cans. The integration of techno-economic analysis (TEA), life cycle assessment (LCA), and a circularity assessment enable a comprehensive analysis of packaging in the food supply chain from their production to end-of-life disposal.^7,8 This work aims to build the first steps in packaging and waste management infrastructure design considering economic and environmental aspects.

References

1. Wang, C., Liu, Y., Chen, W. Q., Zhu, B., Qu, S., & Xu, M. (2021). Critical review of global plastics stock and flow data. Journal of Industrial Ecology, 25(5), 1300-1317.
2. Stegmann, P., Daioglou, V., Londo, M., van Vuuren, D. P., & Junginger, M. (2022). Plastic futures and their CO2 emissions. Nature, 612(7939), 272-276.
3. Walker, T.W., Frelka, N., Shen, Z., Chew, A.K., Banick, J., Grey, S., Kim, M.S., Dumesic, J.A., Van Lehn, R.C. and Huber, G.W. (2020). Recycling of multilayer plastic packaging materials by solvent-targeted recovery and precipitation. Science advances, 6(47)
4. Baratsas, S. G., Pistikopoulos, E. N., & Avraamidou, S. (2021). A systems engineering framework for the optimization of food supply chains under circular economy considerations. Science of the Total Environment, 794, 148726.
5. Jeswani, H., Krüger, C., Russ, M., Horlacher, M., Antony, F., Hann, S., & Azapagic, A. (2021). Life cycle environmental impacts of chemical recycling via pyrolysis of mixed plastic waste in comparison with mechanical recycling and energy recovery. Science of the Total Environment, 769, 144483.
6. Munoz-Briones, P.A., Munguia-López, A. D. C, Sánchez-Riveraa, K.L., Zavalaa, V.M. Huber, G.W. & Avraamidou,S. (2024). Optimal Design of Food Packaging Considering Waste Management Technologies to Achieve Circular Economy. Submitted to Foundations of computer aided process operations/chemical process control.
7. Baratsas, S. G., Pistikopoulos, E. N., & Avraamidou, S. (2022). A quantitative and holistic circular economy assessment framework at the micro level. Computers & Chemical Engineering, 160, 107697.
8. Chialdikas, E., Munguia-López, A. D. C., Aguirre-Villegas, H., & Avraamidou, S. (2023). A framework for the evaluation of the circularity of plastic waste management systems: a case study on mechanical recycling of HDPE. Foundations of computer aided process operations/chemical process control: In-Press.