Abstract
The lifecycle inventory was analyzed for vinegar glass bottles (500 ml), and the environmental loads analysis of these bottles was carried out by the use of the LCI software, which was suited for various kinds of food glass bottles . This LCI software features introduction of several changeable parameters such as the bottle weight, the number of times that the bottle is reused, and the distance of recovered bottle transportation, etc.. Lifecycle environmental loads of one-way and returnable bottles were analyzed for several cases by changing these parameters . It is generally considered that returnable bottles give less environmental loads than one-way bottles. However, in the case of low recovery ratio of returnable bottles, it showed that returnable bottles gave more environmental loads than one-way bottles . It is preferable that the number of reuse times for returnable bottles is more than three times (recovery ratio is over 67 %) .
