Environmental and Economic Analysis of Reusable and Single‐Use Food Packaging Formats in University Campus Food Services
Bibliographic record
Abstract
ABSTRACT The purpose of this study is to assess the environmental and economic impacts of the various food packaging systems offered in university food services in Canada. Toronto Metropolitan University's food service was chosen as a test case. Three systems exist in this setting: single‐use polypropylene (PP) containers, reusable PP clamshells and compostable bagasse clamshells. The goal is to understand which system has the most favourable impact regarding the Tool for the Reduction and Assessment of Chemical and other environmental Impacts' (TRACI 2.1) 10 impact categories and which system is the most financially viable through a cost analysis. The scope includes a cradle‐to‐grave life cycle assessment (LCA) consisting of raw material extraction and production, transportation, usage and end‐of‐life disposal. This study investigates the environmental impact of each packaging system for 10 000 meals consumed by students. This research follows two ISO standards, 14044:2006, and 14040:2006. These standards involve defining the goal and scope, completing a life cycle inventory (LCI) analysis, completing a life cycle impact assessment (LCIA) and interpreting the life cycle. LCI information is extracted using SimaPro v9.0. The study results reveal that the reusable PP clamshell has the least environmental impact when compared to the two other single‐use packaging alternatives for nine of the 10 environmental impact categories. The single‐use PP container has the most significant environmental impact due to its harmful material extraction, production processes and end‐of‐life emissions. The sensitivity analysis determined that if reused a minimum number of 37 times, the reusable clamshell (RU) remains favourable to the single‐use formats in nine of the 10 impact categories. Furthermore, the cost analysis reveals that the reusable packaging format is the most financially favourable when reused 16 times or more. This research concludes that single‐use food packaging options have a more significant environmental impact than reusable PP clamshells. Based on the research findings, purchasing a less harmful detergent, sourcing the packaging locally and reducing the loss rate of reusable PP clamshells could produce an even more favourable environmental impact for the reusable food packaging system.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".