Last modified: 2019-08-15
Abstract
Plastics are primary materials used as food container, packaging, and utensils. The current trend of convinience stores to also focus on food service is associated with increased utilization of single use plastics (SUPs). While the use of SUPs in food service activities is very practical it also pose a serious threat of environmental pollution, namely the generation of plastic wastes. One feasible approach to deal with plastic wastes generation is through carbon footprint (CF) calculation. The value of carbon footprint expressed as kg CO2eq/ton of plastic wastes is a simple measure of the contribution towards climate change. Studies on plastics wastes have been conducted extensively, encompassing many aspects, i.e. generation, sources, recycle, etc. A study focused on SUPs generation by convenience stores and translated into carbon footprint, as a climate change measure, is certainly filling the gap in plastic pollution literature. This study attempts to provide the estimate for SUPs generation by dine-in convenience stores, and to infer the carbon footprints of the SUPs. Furthermore, the SUPs wastes will be grouped by polymer types and food categories. The convenience stores are categorized into two types, i.e. IH and IP. Annualy IH produces more than 100,000 items of plastic waste, while IP produces twice as much. In term of carbon footprint, IH and IP produces more than 13,600 (Kg CO2 eq/Individual) and more than 18,900 (kg CO2 eq/individual), respectively. Only slight differences were found between weekdays and weekends, i.e. 300 (kg CO2 eq/individual). The SUPs generation was higher in weekends than weekdays. PET, PS and HDPE are the “big three” emitters of green house gases (GHGs) followed by LDPE as the lowest contributor. From 11 food categories, (bottled) water and tea are the largest contribution of GHGs.