Closing the Perception-Reality Gap for Sustainable Fresh Food Plastic Packaging

The global discourse surrounding plastics has been marked by a profound perceptual schism, also for plastic packaging in the fresh food industry. The public opinion expresses mounting concerns in terms of such plastic packaging solutions. However, in many cases the unique material properties and the well-established methodology of Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) actually demonstrate the environmental advantage of plastics for food packaging. This paper delves into the chasm between the two perspectives, leveraging empirical evidence to resolve the divide. While performing both a consumer analysis and LCA, this paper underscores the potential for innovative, yet practical design solutions to harmonise the public opinion with counterintuitive positive environmental impacts. A transformative design solution that centres around the concept of shape and material renewal is proposed. It demonstrates how a simple, yet effective redesign can enhance both the environmental impact and consumer acceptance in the industry for mass-produced fresh food packaging. It emphasises the role of LCE in design, with a focus on the pre-consumer phase. The findings provide a practical approach, emphasising the need to reconcile theory with consumer desires, to forge a sustainable path forward in packaging design.</p

Effective Integration of Life Cycle Engineering in Education

In practice, applying life cycle engineering in product design and development requires an integrated approach, because of the many stakeholders and variables (e.g. cost, environmental impact, energy, safety, quality) involved in a complete product life cycle. In educating young engineers, the same integrated approach should be strived for, because a mono disciplinary approach is often less effective. Therefor, direct application of the theory in practical cases is necessary. This paper describes experiences with effective LCE education using the advantages of project-led education. This is illustrated by describing LCE relevant courses and evaluation of graduation assignments including successful integration of LCE elements

Social and Environmental Life Cycle Assessment (SELCA) Method for Sustainability Analysis:The Jeans Global Value Chain as a Showcase

In this chapter the concepts of social life cycle assessment and combined social and environmental LCA were explored through the application of existing LCA methods to the global value chain of jeans. The social and environmental life cycle assessment (SELCA) method resulted from this explorative research that aims to contribute to the battery of impact assessment tools of products whose value chain scope is multinational (global). From a broader perspective, SELCA has a double-folded purpose to (i) identify opportunities for environmental and social improvement at any of the value chain phases of products, for remediation goals, and (ii) predict the environmental and social performance of different ways (scenarios) to produce the same product, using it as a product design tool. To simplify SELCA development, it was decided to use a single product (jeans) as a showcase from the global textile sector. In this showcase, four scenarios for jeans assembly were compared; three of them were defined under the circular economy principles by including recycled materials (cotton, PET and nylon 6) during the yarn production. During the application of the SELCA method, some new challenges were encountered related to inventory analysis, in particular during data acquisition for social inventories. This is later mainly due to the extensive list of key stakeholders for the showcase and the qualitative nature of social metrics. This list starts with cotton cultivators from different countries where regulations and codes of conduct seem to have contextualised interpretations and consequently different levels of implementation. In this regard, governmental intervention to instrument the transition towards suitable social/environmental performance along the global jeans value chain was also discussed in this chapter

Virtual Prototyping : first practice of a European research group

Lien vers la version éditeur: http://www.inderscience.com/books/index.php?action=record&rec_id=696&chapNum=5&journalID=1021&year=2009International audienceThe EMIRAcle association has been created as a European association in order to refer as a pool of European experts with respect to design and manufacturing scientific research. A group of EMIRAcle partners have been working on "Virtual Prototyping (VP)" competencies. The long terms main objectives were: To set a common understanding concerning virtual prototyping To gather competencies in Virtual Prototyping including maturityregarding new concepts and software demonstrators To provide to academics or industries methods, models and software tosupport Virtual Prototyping The paper aims at presenting first results of that research group concerning the creation of a VP knowledge map (second objective). Those results are based on a design case study led by several partners of the EMIRAcle association

Virtual Prototyping : first practice of a European research group

Lien vers la version éditeur: http://www.inderscience.com/books/index.php?action=record&rec_id=696&chapNum=5&journalID=1021&year=2009The EMIRAcle association has been created as a European association in order to refer as a pool of European experts with respect to design and manufacturing scientific research. A group of EMIRAcle partners have been working on “Virtual Prototyping (VP)” competencies. The long terms main objectives were: •To set a common understanding concerning virtual prototyping •To gather competencies in Virtual Prototyping including maturityregarding new concepts and software demonstrators •To provide to academics or industries methods, models and software tosupport Virtual Prototyping The paper aims at presenting first results of that research group concerning the creation of a VP knowledge map (second objective). Those results are based on a design case study led by several partners of the EMIRAcle association