Paper Title
Comparative Study Of Life Cycle Assessment Of Polypropylene And Polylactic Acid For Food Packaging

Abstract
Synthetic polymers caused depletion of the petroleum. Development of PLA as food packaging is frequently done to reduce the environmental impact due to its characteristic of easily degraded. Cradle-to-grave analysis of PLA indicates that even though PLA packaging is easy to degrade, it will still be considered as waste after disposal. However, biodegradability of PLA enabled the cradle-to-cradle analysis to be made where no unwanted excess material produced as it can be recuperated or reused as the packaging decomposes into nutrients. System boundary is first developed. PLA gives lesser GWP where PP gives 203.0 Kg CO2 eqv. Due to implementation of cradle-to-cradle, the GWP value of PLA is reduced to 161.37 Kg CO2 eqv from 164.6 Kg CO2 eqv. AP value of PLA is lower than PP packaging with amount of 4.89 x 10-1 Kg SO2 eqv and 4.89 x 10-1 Kg SO2 eqv for PLA. PP packaging gives lesser environmental impact through ODP and EP with 7.09 x 10-12 Kg CFC-11 eqv and 1.10 x 10-4 Kg P eqv each as compared to PLA with 6.22 x 10-10 Kg CFC-11 and 1.79 x 10-4 Kg P eqv. As the major contributor towards the environmental impact is GWP which covered about 97% over others, PLA packaging gives better environmental impact as compared to PP packaging. Keywords - Life Cycle Assessment, Cradle-to-Cradle, Polypropylene, Polylactic acid, Food packaging, Environmental Impacts