Kraft Foods outlines sustainability with lifecycle assessment

NORTHFIELD, Ill. — Kraft Foods announced its use of lifecycle assessment, which measures the footprint of what goes into making a product.

Building on its multiyear footprinting project, Kraft Foods said LCA has been used to map its impact on climate change, land and water use, and are utilizing lifecycle thinking to uncover ways to eliminate waste in manufacturing, including reducing the amount of raw materials used at the beginning of a supply chain and to help measure how product and packaging innovations improve on previous designs. For example, Kraft has used LCA to confirm the design of the Kraft Yes pack salad dressing has a reduced environmental impact, using 60% less plastic packaging than the previous container.

Additionally, as part of LCA, Kraft Foods also has used a proprietary tool called Eco-Calculator, which calculates the percentage of post-consumer recycled material in a given package design, along with the amount of energy and carbon dioxide emissions required to create the package. The tool is based on data from the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Energy and packaging industry groups.

"Lifecycle assessment is an important part of our sustainability journey," said Roger Zellner, sustainability director for research, development and quality at Kraft Foods. "It gives us a competitive advantage, as we now have more insight into how to reduce our products' footprints, find efficiencies and validate and explain those benefits to customers and consumers. Together, we're focusing and working smarter and communicating better, which is good for the environment, people and our business."