Environment

British Glass has blasted Sidel's life-cycle analysis on beer packaging as "yet another example of greenwash" that should be disqualified from serious consideration for using "selective criteria".

Director general David Workman said that life-cycle analysis should be done on a "cradle-to-cradle basis" and, as yet, there was no such study for glass.

"We seem to have been inundated recently with pieces of work that are designed to promote one aspect of a material's performance whilst excluding others. Once a particular line is promoted then people start believing it," he said.

Workman told Packaging News that part of the problem for in establishing a life-cycle analysis for glass was that supermarkets were full of products that came from or were bottled abroad which would vary the carbon impact.

"Genuine recycling performance, not just theoretical wishful thinking, must also be included in the argument," he added.

The Sidel research, revealed at the Brau Beviale trade show in Nuremberg, Germany, last week, found PET to be the most environmentally friendly pack for beer brewed and bottled in Belgium and consumed and disposed of in the UK.