A multidimensional environmental evaluation of packaging materials

To reduce environmental damage, the properties of environmental issues must be understood. Most previous research has performed relevant assessment either qualitatively or quantitatively. This paper provides a new comprehensive evaluative framework to integrate these two types of approaches. Three methods are combined: (1) life cycle assessment (LCA), a quantitative method, to assess environmental loading, (2) analytic hierarchy process (AHP), a qualitative method, to obtain opinions from experts, and (3) cluster analysis to integrate the results of the former two methods. This new framework could provide integrated information and avoid a bias towards either qualitative or quantitative approach. To present the process of this new evaluative framework, packaging materials are selected as the case study in this paper. (C) 2003 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.