Packaging Assessment and Recycling Impact for Consumer Awareness
PARICA links a product barcode to its packaging parts, materials and weights and then shows how to sort each part locally and what recycling it could avoid.
Reference records · 30-day growth
Barcoded products · 30-day growth
From barcode to benefit
How it works
Identify your packaging, learn how to recycle it, and explore the potential environmental benefit.
Scan product
Read the barcode — or a receipt — and find the product's packaging record.
- Product identity, pack size and packaging version
- Unknown barcodes matched to the most similar published pack
Assess packaging
Break the pack into its parts: body, cap, label, film, tray…
- Material or multilayer composition per part
- Packaging weight kept separate from the contents
- Every weight tagged measured, declared, matched or proxy
Recycling guidance
Explain how to prepare each part and which collection stream it goes in.
- Keep attached or separate, per Greek national rules
- Municipal notes shown beside the national rule
- No established route → no recycling credit
Potential impact
Compare landfill with following the collection instructions.
- Climate and energy results, each with its own evidence
- Translated into everyday household comparisons
- Water shown as “Insufficient data” until quantified
Benefit = Landfill − Recycling
Inside the library
What the evidence base contains
Live breakdown of every reference record: which shelves it covers, how each figure was obtained, and which materials carry the mass.
Records by category
Reference records per supermarket category
Evidence tiers
How each record's figures were obtained
- Declared367
- Study / benchmark176
- Calculated145
- Other / illustrative114
- Measured83
Mass by material family
Summed component grams, per-package records
Benchmarks and study packs are estimates until a specific barcode's pack is measured or declared.
Built on measured parts, not guesses
PARICA starts from peer-reviewed and agency-published inventories that break each pack into its parts — bottle, cap, label, film, tray — with the material and measured weight in grams. Those masses drive the potential recycling benefit compared with a landfill baseline.
*Packs weighed by the cited researchers (each study counted once), not PARICA products.
Updated live from the PARICA database · 885 records
1 L still-water PET bottle
Reference estimate24.20 g| Part | Material | Grams | Potential vs landfill |
|---|---|---|---|
| Body | PET | 22.8 | 40.8 g CO₂esourced |
| Cap | HDPE | 1 | 0.8 g CO₂esourced |
| Label | LDPE | 0.37 | 0.1 g CO₂esourced |
| Adhesive | Unknown | 0.03 | 0.0 g CO₂eno credit · Material not identified |
41.7 g sourced · 0.0 g no credit
Source: Ferrara et al. 2021, Recycling 6(3):50 (2021)
From grams to a landfill comparison
- • Assumes the part is sorted correctly; compared with landfill only.
- • A purchase is not recycling — results are potential, not achieved.
- • Bonded laminate layers and per-use masses receive no credit.
- • EU JRC and US WARM results are kept separate, never added.
Scan
A barcode identifies the product and its current packaging version.
Components
Bottle, cap, label, film — each with material, grams and evidence.
Receipt
Basket estimate with coverage and a QR code to the details.
Plug in
Retailers call one endpoint with barcodes and quantities.
Your basket's packaging: about the weight of half a packet of pasta. Recycled instead of landfilled, the saving is like the CO₂ from burning a shot glass of petrol.
About the weight of half a packet of pasta
290 g · steel, pp, hdpe
Like the CO₂ from burning a shot glass of petrol
about 119.7 g CO₂e · EU method (Greece-relevant) · Compared with landfill.
e.g. about enough electricity to cook one portion of rice
Based on a measured cooking cycle in a small rice cooker.
example: 0.067 kWh
If recycling saved 9 L — enough to fill a dog's bowl 5 times
Using a 1.8-litre bowl (TRIXIE 24843) as the volume comparison.
example: 9 litres · not this basket's result
Check the sorting tips per product
Potential benefit if properly recycled — buying isn't recycling. Cards marked “Example only” show how a figure would look; they are not measured results.
Computed live from the reference database with the same calculator as real receipts. Scope and conditions always appear beside the figure.
Conditional, never forced
Figures appear only when a landfill-comparable source exists.
Every source visible
Links, verification dates and version history beside each factor.
Local beside national
Municipal notes sit next to national Greek sorting rules.
Make packaging impact visible
Transparent, conditional estimates — tied to sources, local rules and real coverage.
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