Franke Beverage Systems is one of the world`s leading provider of stainless steel kegs. In the section of beverage kegs more and more plastic containers come into the market, directly competing the stainless steel kegs. Hence the question arose, which system performs environmentally better. It is unclear if the reduction in weight and transport and the change of material (from stainless steel to plastics) can make up for the single use only.

The functional unit is one beverage keg delivered once to the customer (restaurant). The plastic kegs go into the waste stream afterwards, while the steel keg goes back to the refiller for reuse. Beer, filling the kegs and beer-storage in large tanks is not included in this study. Recycling of the materials at the end of life of the kegs is modelled according to the recycled content approach. Recycling efforts are attributed to the product using the secondary raw materials and no emission credits (for potentially avoided extraction of primary resources) are attributed to the product providing material for recycling.

The results show that the reuse rate is a critical parameter. With a reuse rate of 20 times or more, the steel keg causes lower climate change and water use impacts compared to those of the plastic kegs. The figure below shows the dependency of the environmental impacts of the chromium steel keg on the keg reuse rate. The environmental impacts are relative to those of the plastic keg. The share of the washing and of the transport stays constant. However the share of the production is variable depending on the number of reuse cycles. It becomes evident, that the higher the rate of return, the lower become the environmental impacts.