Abstract
For this research, the University of Johannesburg was chosen as a case study to investigate the environmental impacts of currently used polystyrene takeaway containers and potential alternatives,
namely paper and reusable takeaway containers, through a Life Cycle Assessment. A functional unit of delivering a meal each day for students or staff members in one academic year (230 days) was applied. The Life Cycle Assessment was expanded to a Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment by including additional social and economic midpoint indicators and aggregating relative scores.
The study’s aim was to find out which of the three takeaway food containers has the overall best
performance when accounting for the environmental, social and economic dimensions. For the social dimension, indicators in the form of preference, acceptability and likelihood of use were tested among students and staff members, and additional data on environmental awareness and food outlet usage patterns were collected through a questionnaire. For the economic dimension, the economic feasibility
of each takeaway food container was tested by comparing the cost to deliver the functional unit, which was determined by interviewing food outlet owners and using market prices. To investigate the environmental dimension, the Life Cycle Assessment method ReCiPe 2016 was applied in SimaPro, and
foreground data were collected by interviewing manufacturers.
Based on the global warming potential alone, the life cycle of the polystyrene takeaway container
contributes the most carbon dioxide equivalent with 5.47 × 10-3 kg CO2 eq, followed by the life cycles
of the paper (1.76 × 10-3 kg CO2 eq) and the reusable (5.52 × 10-4 kg CO2 eq) takeaway containers. When considering all environmental indicators and based on endpoint impact results, the reusable takeaway container contributes the least environmental impacts, followed by the paper takeaway container and then the polystyrene takeaway container. Paper takeaway containers receive the highest preference, acceptability and likelihood of use among respondents, while polystyrene takeaway containers are the least preferred and accepted. However, polystyrene takeaway containers
are the most affordable option, followed by reusable takeaway containers.
When aggregating scores of all dimensions, the results vary depending on which aggregation level (midpoint, endpoint or single score) is chosen, which is attributed to the weight each dimension
receives. The reusable takeaway container performs the best across all aggregation levels, followed by
the polystyrene takeaway container for midpoint and single score aggregation level. Because paper
takeaway containers perform best for the social indicators, it performs better when equal weight is
given to the social and environmental dimension, as is done when endpoint indicators are aggregated.
iv
To implement a reusable container system, it would be sensible to create on-campus washing facilities
to reduce costs, and to further investigate the implementation with students and other stakeholders,
to allow for the development of a convenient and user-friendly system. Furthermore, even though students and staff members demonstrate environmental awareness, concerns around hygiene need
to be addressed and customers need to be well informed about a reusable takeaway container system,
as a lack of knowledge has been identified as a major barrier to engaging in pro-environmental behaviours.
Keywords: Takeaway, Life Cycle Sustainability Assessment, Paper, Polypropylene, Polystyrene.