The awareness for more environmentally sustainable packaging solutions is steadily growing. With both consumers and manufacturers looking to minimize their impacts on the environment, the need for easy-to-implement and standardized measures strengthening a circular economy rises. In the research, the goal was to determine whether the carbon footprint and circularity of non-food plastic packaging can be improved by simple design changes. The results should then lead to design recommendations, providing a Design for Life Cycle approach. The methodology of the study was to conceptually design a single-use plastic packaging with attributes having positive and negative effects on recyclability. Herein, only design characteristics from products obtainable on the market were regarded. Moreover, a comparison over existing recyclability assessment methods is given. The recyclability was then determined with the selected approach by Cyclos HTP, and a reference calculation was conducted. Life Cycle Assessments were implemented for 14 packaging designs using the GaBi software and the Environmental Footprint method. The results showed that dark color, material compounds, insoluble adhesives, and large labels result in lower recyclability of the single-use packaging. The impacts on climate change range from 0.13 kg CO₂-equivalent emissions (100% recyclability) to 0.21 kg CO₂-equivalent emissions (0% recyclability) per packaging, showing that lower recyclability leads to a larger carbon footprint in all assessed scenarios. Concluding, the research demonstrated that by applying Design for Life Cycle measures, impacts on climate change can be reduced. Lastly, design recommendations for decision makers are outlined.

As food typically accounts for substantially higher resource use and potential environmental impacts than its packaging, packaging-related food wastage must be considered in environmental assessments of food packaging. However, this is not currently performed as standard in Life Cycle Assessment (LCA). This article proposes a conceptual framework as an approach to systematically integrating packaging functionality into LCA by incorporating packaging-related food wastage depending on shelf-life and due to technical emptiability. Based on literature data, a segmented non-linear regression is proposed to estimate shelf-life-dependent food wastage at retail level. Two exponential models provide a consistently decreasing relationship between shelf-life and food wastage, with S = 0.064 for products with ≤30 days shelf-life and S = 0.036 for >30 days shelf-life. These values indicate a satisfactory internal fit within both shelf-life segments. In addition, established experimental procedures for quantifying packaging emptiability are integrated to capture further packaging-related food wastage. The approach yields a pragmatic estimation of packaging-related food wastage that can be operationalized in packaging LCAs. Rather than predicting exact amounts of food wastage, the framework enables a more holistic, function-oriented assessment of food packaging by making environmental trade-offs between packaging design, shelf-life effects and emptiability transparent for screening-level LCA.

Purpose: As of today, Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is a process that is still largely separated from product development processes. Acknowledging the increasing necessity for sustainable product development amidst stringent regulatory and consumer demands, integration of LCA into product development processes is necessary to ensure efficient ecodesign practices. Methods: In this paper a methodology integrating Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) into methods of product development, specifically the V-model is used to schedule LCA in product development processes. The methodology identifies critical data needs and sources relevant to LCA, ensuring a scheduled integration of sustainability metrics into the existing V-model for product development. A V-model structure for LCA studies is provided to emphasize the similarities between LCA and product development processes. A clustered assessment strategy is introduced, segmenting the LCA into partial assessment based on life cycle stages and respective data needs in the development process. A case study for the development of a rotor of an electric motor is conducted to exemplify the implications of the methodology. Results: The resulting V-model-based methodology for scheduling LCA within product development presents a novel approach that uses the product development process itself as the basis for LCA integration, explicitly addressing the temporal dimension and enabling early, cluster-specific assessments along the product development process. The V-model for LCA presents a step towards LCA-centred product development processes, aligning the two procedures by splitting LCA into three clusters based on development steps. The case study partially shows the applicability of the scheduled application of LCA during product development for two of the three clusters. Hotspots for the design of the developed rotor for an electric motor in the impact category climate change were identified in the raw material acquisition stage, especially the magnets (about 91% of impact). Conclusions: By providing a methodology for the integration of LCA in the V-model, the study supports practitioners in making informed decisions that reflect environmental impacts, ultimately contributing to more sustainable designs. The conducted work contributes to the advancement of ecodesign frameworks by merging LCA with established product development processes as described in VDI/VDE 2206, thereby fostering a holistic approach to sustainable innovation. It thus contributes to the advancement in process oriented LCA frameworks.

This paper aims to investigate the impact of FDM slicing parameters on the visual appearance of a printed product. In conjunction to this, a lifecycle assessment is conducted to determine whether there is a trade-off between the ecological impact and visual appearance of a product. Furthermore, assumptions about an optimal parameter set considering both visual qualities and lifecycle impact as well as the impact of using recycled material can be made. The paper therefore conducted a case study assessing both visual qualities and the lifecycle impact of an exemplary FDM model.