Application of life cycle management for sustainable consumption and production of polyethylene terephthalate (pet) water bottle in Thailand

Abstract

Bottom-up participation in sustainability is challenging for improving socio-economic and environmental securities. This research was thus aimed to present evidence-based evaluation of implementing sustainable consumption and production (SCP) for polyethylene terephthalate (PET) water bottle in Thailand, with emphasis on performances of the producers and the consumers in production and consumption life cycle management (LCM). Resource efficiency and impact reduction were the key indicators for evaluating producers’ performances in sustainable production (SP) and consumers’ performances in sustainable consumption (SC). The SP involved bottling system whereas use of the bottle, coupled with disposing of post-used bottle was assigned for the SC. Plant observations and in-depth interviews with survey transcript were conducted for two groups of producer: top brand and house brand, whereas a set of questionnaire was prepared for consumer samples. The top brands’ and house brands’ performances in four categories: corporate social responsibility (CSR), eco-design, 3 R and LCM, were examined to justify the SP. The analytical statistics of one-way ANOVA was used to interpret the SC variables consisting of demographic data, drinking water consumption and consumer’s agreement to the SC practice. The SP and SC results were transformed to a five-point scale for rating the SCP success. Three most prominent findings are that both producers and consumers moderately account for the SP and the SC, are likely to favor the resource efficiency over the impact reduction, and that the production and consumption LCM are highly potential for the SCP success. The research also reveals that the top brands consider CSR more important for the SP. Producers are challenging for improving water efficiency due to the lost-filled water in the open loop with adapting to the closed loop. On SC side, the consumers agree to fulfill the consumption efficiency by drinking up a whole bottle of water and reduce the impact by accompanying post-used bottle for solely disposing of them in a trash bin. The achieving outcomes are listing as (1) Matrix model bottom-up participation in SCP implementation, (2) Evidence-based case of sustainability in both environment and socio-economic development and (3) Good practice for LCM development. Finally, a bottom-up participation in SCP implementation shall be largely developed to ensure sustainability success in Thai context.