Background and purpose Numerous life cycle assessments (LCAs) have been conducted on the environmental impacts of beverage packaging systems. With such a potentially rich source of knowledge available, it seemed worthwhile to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of those existing studies. This paper describes a recent ‘meta analysis’, whose goal it was to provide a structured overview of LCAs on beverage cartons and other packaging systems from past years in order to answer two key questions: (1) Is it possible to draw general conclusions regarding the environmental performance (in terms of strengths and weaknesses) of beverage cartons in comparison to alternative packaging systems from these existing LCAs? (2) If certain trends arise across these LCA studies regarding the environmental performance of beverage cartons compared to other packaging systems for beverages, what can be said on their validity and limitations? This article can be downloaded free of charge from: www.ace.be/uploads/Modules/Publications/lca_studies_article_published_1_...
