Corporation de l'École Polytechnique de Montréal

Published purpose

The NRC and the CIRAIG are collaborating to develop an advanced life-cycle assessment (LCA) ecodesign tool to guide the main steps of the development of more sustainable plastics for food packaging, in an iterative manner from lab-scale research to massive market deployment. Early lab-scale decisions will first be guided by simplified LCAs, but these will be quickly followed by more detailed prospective analyses of potential environmental impacts that integrate engineering models to capture expected economies of scale and learnings. These will be complemented by an analysis of the manner in which these materials may alter the material flows of plastics in the Canadian economy, along with possible positive or negative repercussions on the environmental performance of national and regional waste management, agrifood and energy sectors. These different analysis perspectives will be integrated in a single, open-source software tool and database infrastructure to ensure optimal use of available data and coherent guidance.