The choice of packaging material has a significant contribution to the overall impact of the beverage value chain. Collection of post-consumer packaging materials is often controlled by national or regional regulations, which have to be based on sound considerations. Therefore, stakeholders alongside the packaging value chain need supporting information to select environmentally sound packaging and define their own policy. Five different packaging materials were examined during their whole life cycle. Due to the potentially direct impact of collection system on the population, and lacking information on such an analysis in recent literature, this paper focuses on six bottle collection systems; kerbside bin, kerbside bag; deposit-refund, combinations with thermal compression of plastic bottles as well as an attempt made toward examining refillable bottles.
