Sustainable product‐package design in a food supply chain: A multi‐criteria life cycle approach

Abstract

This paper presents a multi‐criteria decision‐making approach for the selection of a sustainable product‐package design, accounting for the different actors within a food supply chain. The study extends the focus of sustainable packaging design to the collective of all supply chain actors. Decision criteria are identified via a literature review, and current product‐package alternatives are collected via interviews. With the inputs of these criteria and the alternative designs, a multi‐criteria decision‐making problem is formulated and solved using Best Worst Method (BWM). BWM finds the weights of the criteria. Using these weights, the ranking of the alternatives is found. The implementation of the analysis took place for three selected products of the Kraft Heinz Company. Data on the preferences of the supply chain members of these selected products were collected, and the optimal package designs were selected. It is shown through sensitivity analysis that modifying the weights that decision makers assign to the preferences of the supply chain members and the importance of the dimensions of sustainability have an effect on the selection of the optimal design.

El cambio a envases sostenibles como estrategia competitiva de las empresas exportadoras. Un enfoque de Economía Circular

“…Al basarse en el ambiento social, económico, haciendo más con menos y contener materiales no contaminantes. Fuente: (Rezaei et al, 2018).…”

“…En una segunda fase de la presentación de resultados se adopta como referencia la investigación realizada por Rezaei et al (2018) quienes seleccionan criterios para el diseño de envases sostenibles, considerando las necesidades de los actores de la cadena de suministros de alimentos y alternativas presentes en el mercado de proveedores. Así también los estudios de Mura et al (2019), aplicados a 254 Pymes italianas, indican la importancia del uso de los envases ecológicos como estrategia competitiva a nivel mundial y criterios para su diseño.…”

Justice Concerns in SDG 12: The Problem of Missing Consumption Limits

“…One of the main reasons why existing large-scale FMCG packaging repurposing systems have run into such difficulties is that they have employed the 'ambulance at the bottom of the cliff' approach to treating this particular environmental ailment, and the role of upfront design has only recently become a focus of research (Rezaei et al 2019). It is impossible to say how many unique FMCG packages exist in a developed economy, but the number certainly runs into the millions, and the specific material component and technology types run into the thousands.…”

Rational Design of Packaging: Toward Safer and Ecodesigned Food Packaging Systems

“…Despite 29 methods available for sustainable product development (Buchert et al, 2017), current global indices remain too rough and too uncertain to finalize design details (Yu et al, 2017). Rezaei et al (2019) proposed a pairwise preference comparison methodology recently to select the best tradeoff between the consumer acceptability and environment impacts. The approach is qualitative and does not integrate the food explicitly.…”