Cascades: polystyrene foam packaging a good choice for environment

Cascades, a Canada-headquartered producer and converter of packaging and tissue products, is claiming that its polystyrene foam is an environmental choice of material for making food packaging trays, based on the results of a Life Cycle Analysis (LCA).

Quoting the results of the LCA conducted by Ciraig that calculates the ecological footprint for various food packaging trays made from six types of plastic and molded pulp originating from its own plants, Cascades says that polystyrene foam, made of over 90% air, has an irrefutable ecological advantage, despite the fact that it is rarely recycled. "For the items studied, this material produced the least amount of greenhouse gas emissions throughout the entire product life cycle, from raw material extraction to end-of-life," explains Cascades in a press release.

"In addition, using recycled materials in the fabrication of food packaging trays, as is the case with the RPET (recycled polyethylene terephthalate) and molded pulp, results in tangible environmental benefits, as doing so reduces the impact resulting from raw material extraction."

Luc Langevin, President and COO of Cascades Specialty Products Group under Cascades Inc, is quoted as saying, "This analysis provides a new perspective on food packaging. The environmental performance of our trays is much better than popular belief. Polystyrene foam can now be part of our environmental packaging solution."

This LCA was designed to determine the environmental impact of Cascades' food packaging trays. Seven types of packaging materials were considered, including foamed and oriented polystyrene (XPS and OPS) or no. 6 plastic, standard and recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET and RPET) or no. 1 plastic, polylactic acid polymer (PLA) member of the no. 7 plastic category, polypropylene (PP) or no. 5 plastic and finally molded pulp made of recycled newspapers and telephone books.