Environmental Impacts
Learn about the impacts of PET packaging on energy usage, greenhouse gas emissions, even jobs and local revenues.
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Life Cycle Analysis
Evaluating Environmental Impacts of PET Packaging
Life Cycle Assessment or Analysis (LCA) is a tool commonly used to evaluate the environmental performance of a product throughout all life cycle stages. The data set used for this analysis is called a Life Cycle Inventory (LCI), which quantifies inputs and outputs for a product throughout its life cycle.
Studies of this kind by Franklin Associates have shown that PET outperforms glass and aluminum beverage packaging in many key environmental categories, and that replacing virgin PET resin with recycled PET results in significant environmental savings.
PET vs. Alternative Beverage Containers
Additional Resources – PET Resin
Previous studies have shown that there are significant environmental benefits when products are made with recycled PET.
PET Resin LCA Infographic (PDF)
Virgin vs. Recycled PET Calculator (Excel)
The PDF provides a high-level summary of environmental benefits resulting from PET recycling in the US & Canada, while the Excel calculator generates an environmental impact report for a specified weight of PET and percentage of recycled content.
Sources
An LCA study for virgin PET resin, completed by Franklin Associates on behalf of NAPCOR, was finalized in 2020. Meanwhile, a complementary study on postconsumer recycled resins (including PET) was also done by Franklin for the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) using data from a similar timeframe. The full documents are available below, and datasets have been submitted to the Federal LCA Commons.
Cradle-To-Resin Life Cycle Analysis of Polyethylene Terephthalate Resin (2020)
Life Cycle Impacts for Postconsumer Recycled Resins: PET, HDPE, and PP (2018)