Comparison of the environmental impacts of three support wires for tomato farming: paper, jute and polypropylene

Summary

Small companies encounter difficulties to adapt to new markets with a sustainable perspective. The subject of this article is a paper transformation company which has been eager to develop the organic farming market by developing a new plant support. Alternatives made from plant fibres or plastics exist, such as jute and polypropylene. The main difficulty of this project was to ecodesign a paper product with a multicriteria approach. The factors consi according to the Life Cycle Assessment methodology (on raw material extraction, manufacturing and end-of-life) are summarised. Secondly, the characteristics of the product are discussed in regards to these results and questions as part of the interpretation phase. Finally, ways of improvement of the of the LCA methodology to improve the study in terms of geographical representativeness and societal considerations are discussed.