Multicriterial optimization of liquid food packaging systems

The food industry is in the crossfire of increasing pressure of competition, consumer demands, and growing importance of ecological sustainability considerations. Life cycle analysis is one of the most important methods for evaluation of environmental effects of food industrial technologies and packaging systems. During the last decades there have been an intense work to collect pieces of information on different environmental aspects of food packaging systems all over the world, but there is a considerable gap between the amount of knowledge and its practical application in decision making on the level of enterprises as well as in the process of determination of environmental protection fee. Application of modern, freely available software frameworks for life cycle analysis offers a favourable possibility for integration of environmental information into managerial and governmental decision making processes. Based on case studies, the article demonstrates the possibilities of utilisation of cumulative environmental burden indicators as well as expert decision-support systems for optimisation of product-portfolio, based on environmental considerations