Brown Bag Seminar: The hidden cost of wasted packaging, reduce and reuse habits can save lives and money!

Packaging use, in addition to protecting and preserving products, has evolved promoting new consumer habits and becoming a distinctive brand feature, linking producers and consumers. However, today packaging accounts for a significant proportion of household waste, raising environmental concerns in this regard. 

EU policies promote recycling and the circular economy, remaining focused on end-of-life waste management rather than prevention. 

This study examines the sustainability of packaging using data of embodied energy, namely the energy used in the production of packaging materials (paper, plastic, glass, aluminium), most of which are intended to become waste after a very short life cycle. The energy data are linked to the resulting emissions for each country’s energy mix. These emissions data are then used to calculate the health effects and related external costs of air pollution, using estimates from the EVA (Economic Valuation of Air Pollution) model. 

The study links energy consumption in packaging production to air pollution and the associated healthcare costs, highlighting upstream impacts often overlooked in current research, and calculates a unit cost (€/kg) for the externalities arising from the use of packaging. 

Waste prevention, in addition to environmental protection, becomes an energy-efficiency tool that can improve air quality and public health.