Policy brief - SUSTAINABILITY AND CIRCULARITY ASSESSMENT OF REUSABLE PACKAGING

The Challenge: Over recent years, numerous Life Cycle Assessments analysing reuse systems and comparing them to existingsingle-use systems have been published. Whilst useful for assessing when and how switching to a reusablesystem can be a better option to tackle issues such as global warming or resources depletion, it is difficult todraw conclusions from them in the short and long term to make strategic decisions on the regional or nationaladoption of reuse, as they suffer from a lack of real operational data and methodological reference frames.For the example of reusable packaging, the scientific community has even published a letter warning the EuropeanParliament about the insufficient scientific rigour and transparency of comparative LCAs used to influencedecisions for the Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (1). To ensure the LCAs for reuse systems arerobust in identifying which use-case reusable systems should be adopted, several methodological points must beaddressed.