The goal of conducting a packaging Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is to identify, and understand, the environmental impact drivers of a given packaging system across its entire lifecycle.
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An LCA can also be used to compare the environmental impact of multiple alternative packaging solutions with the help of tools such as EPD or PEF Dashboards, or MCDA (Multi Criteria Decisions Analysis), which allows us to understand which solutions would have the lowest environmental impact and inform future decisions when considering packaging system options and design.

To make informed decisions it is important to consider the whole lifecycle and think of the packaging system from cradle-to-grave. To help make this process easier, we have developed a standard template in excel which includes common materials, transport, and end of life processes for packaging systems.

The Packaging LCA model references Ecoinvent datasets. Some datasets have both a primary material source and a secondary material source.

Packaging LCA Template Excel Sheet Download

To setup the packaging LCA:

Once you have downloaded the 'Packaging LCA Template' excel file from the link above, open the file, it should be the same format as shown in the screenshot below.

Note: Please right click on an image and select 'Open image in a new tab', to enlarge the screenshots.

The first step is to change the name of the 'Packaging System' in the first grey box to reflect the name of your packaging solution. This will automatically be populated to the blue headings below, these do not need manually editing.

For this example rename 'Packaging System' to 'Packaging Tutorial Pallet 1'.

You then need to 'Save As', to create a new, unique file. The new file name can be the same as the 'Package System' name you entered, but not the same as any other existing packaging BOM files.

The grey boxes in the excel sheet indicate input cells where you can add, change or manipulate the information.

The template has three main sections:

The Transport and End of Life sections are at the bottom of the spreadsheet.

Section 1: Materials

These headings include categories for common materials such as foils, films and other materials used for the packaging of components.

Fill in the 'Total Packaging' column with the amount by weight in Kilograms (kg) or by volume in Cubic Metres (m3) of each material used in your packaging system. The total amount will automatically be calculated in each of the heading rows.
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Note: The Euro-Flat Pallet amount is expressed as a 'unit' and is a percentage of the pallet proportion per component stored on the pallet.

For example, if there are 50 components on your pallet, the percentage of the pallet per component is 2%, entered as 0.02 units in the 'Total Packaging' column.

For this example fill in the 'Total Packaging' column in the Materials section with the following data:

Low Density Polyethylene Packaging Film (LDPE) = 0.5kg

Nylon 6 (PA 6) injection mould = 0.05kg

PLA injection mould = 0.3kg

Polypropylene Granulate = 0.15kg

Steel stamp and bend = 0.28kg

Corrugated Board Box = 0.2kg

Euro-Flat Pallet = (1/number of components) = 0.125unit

Note: The Pallet will also be reused 3 times, so enter 3 in the 'Reuse cycles' column of the Euro-Flat Pallet, this will automatically adjust the 'Amount' column accordingly.

When entering the Euro-Flat Pallet 'Total Packaging' amount, you can use a formula to calculate your pallet per component proportion.

Section 2: Transport

Transport has 3 headings, 'Inbound transport', 'Inbound transport - reusable materials' and 'Outbound transport'.

Fill in the 'Amount' column in metric ton*km to represent the transport used in your packaging system. The total amount will automatically be calculated in each of the heading rows.

Note: The Euro-Flat Pallet is not included in the Transport section, because the environmental impact is calculated in Makersite on a per pallet basis, not per weight of pallet.

For this example fill in the Transport section with the following data:

Inbound Transport:

Transport - lorry, unspecified = 0.012 metric ton*km

Transport - freight train = 0.1386 metric ton*km

Outbound Transport:

Transport - lorry, unspecified = 0.148 metric ton*km

Transport - sea, transoceanic ship = 23.2 metric ton*km

The above totals are the sum of all legs of transport for each material. For example all of the materials being delivered to the manufacturing site (Inbound Transport), have one leg of transport each, they are transported by lorry or train from their respective manufacturing sites, to your product manufacturing site.

If however one of the materials was first transported by ship, then by lorry, this would also need to be included.

For the Outbound Transport in this example, we are assuming that your finished product, and it's associated packing, will be transported by lorry from your products manufacturing site, to a sea port to be transported by ship, then the final transport leg will be by lorry to it's final destination. All legs must be accounted for in the above transport entries. This is why the totals are much larger than the total weight of packaging you are transporting, as each material has multiple transport legs.

Note: Depending on how complex your transport mix is, we recommend creating a separate spreadsheet, which maps out the different transport legs for each material, then enter the totals into your Packaging_BOM template.

Section 3: End of Life

End of Life (EOL) is the process of disposal of the materials used, the default list contains some common End of Life processes.

Fill in the total amount by weight of material in Kilograms (kg), for each of the end of life processes, each process can contain the weight from multiple materials i.e. if both Low Density Polyethylene Packaging Film and Corrugated Board Box are incinerated, then the total weight for both materials is entered in the 'process-specific burdens, municipal incineration' field.

Ensure any rows in this section which are unused are set to 0. The total amount will automatically be calculated in the heading row.

For this example fill in the End of Life section with the following data:

Treatment of discarded steel = 0.28kg

Plastic mix EoL treatment = 1kg

Sorted paper EoL treatment = 0.2kg

There are a few ways to adapt the template to your needs or make it simpler. These are optional, to be completed if desired, but are not required for the functionality of the packaging LCA template.

Note: For your first import it is recommended to keep the template as it is to ensure a good set of results initially.

Any rows which have blank or 0 amounts, can be deleted at the end to simplify the final BOM.

To create a bespoke template for your company, simply delete any white rows under the Materials, Transport or End of Life headings which do not apply to your company. If a whole section does not apply to your company, the heading row can also be deleted. This can then be saved as a new custom template file to be used for future imports.

Be careful NOT to delete any of the heading rows (rows colored Blue) UNLESS they also have blank or 0 amounts as this could cause problems during the import due to incorrect formatting of the template.

It is also possible to add new sections, however any new entries in the 'Name' column will need to be manually mapped to a Makersite dataset, only the entries in the default template will map automatically. For more detailed information on manually mapping datasets, please see Step 4 in the Import a BOM tutorial in the Makersite FAQ.

To create another packaging system, simply save a copy of the template file, rename 'Packaging System' in the first grey box to reflect the name of your second packaging solution and update the Materials, Transport and End of Life amounts accordingly.

Both the file name and the Packaging System name in the first grey box should NOT be the same as any existing packaging BOM files, to avoid overriding any previous files when importing.

To import your Packaging LCA file into Makersite, follow the same method as importing a Bill of Materials (BOM). The method can be found in the Import a BOM tutorial in the Makersite FAQ.

Your imported Packaging LCA can now be used in Makersite for MCDA (Multi Criteria Decision Analysis) to compare the environmental impacts across the lifecycle for the packaging solutions. You can also analyze the EPD and PEF scores, but you need to set up Product Category Rules and calculate the Life Cycle model for your imported data first.