Applying the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to Estimate the Environmental Impact of Selected Phases of a Production Process of Forming Bottles for Beverages

The study concerns the current issues of the impact of packaging on the natural environment. The main goal was to analyse the life cycle (LC) of a beverage bottle made of polyethylene terephthalate. The functional unit comprised a total of 1000 PET bottles with a capacity of 1 l. The limit of the adopted system included steps from the moment of delivery of preforms to the production plant until they were properly shaped in the process of forming beverage bottles. Excluded from the system were the further stages of the production process, such as beverage bottling, labelling or storage/distribution. The processes related to the transport and storage of the raw material were also excluded. The LCA analysis was performed using the program of the Dutch company Pre Consultants called SimaPro 8.4.0. The “ReCiPe 2016” method was selected for the interpretation of lists of emitted chemicals. The results of the tests were presented graphically on bar charts and verified and interpreted.