###### Abstract  
In the development of packaging products, the considerations are not limited to the food shelf-life, safety, and practicality, but also environmental sustainability. This paper reports a life cycle assessment (LCA) analysis of a proposed natural fiber-reinforced biopolymer composite takeout food container. The study focuses on the damage assessment of the whole product system, including disposal scenarios of the thermoformed sugar palm fiber (SPF)-reinforced sago starch composite takeout food container. The analysis performed was to anticipate the environmental impact of the cradle-to-grave approach. The results exhibited the total human health damage of \(2.63\times 10^{-5}\) DALY and ecosystem damage of \(9.46\times 10^{-8}\) species.year per kg of containers. The main contributor was the carbon dioxide emission from fossil fuel combustion for energy generation that contributed to climate change and caused human health and the ecosystem damages with low-level metrics of \(1.3\times 10^{-5}\) DALY and \(7.39\times 10^{-8}\) species.yr per kg of containers, respectively. The most contributed substances in the 'Particulate matter formation' impact categories that caused respiratory diseases were from air/nitrogen oxides, air/particulates, \(<\)2.5 \(\upmu\)m, and air/sulphur dioxide with the metrics of \(2.93\times 10^{-6}\) DALY, \(2.75\times 10^{-6}\) DALY, and \(1.9\times 10^{-6}\) DALY per kg containers, correspondingly. Whereas, for the 'Agricultural land occupation', which contributed to ecosystem damage, almost the total contributions came from raw/occupation, forest, intensive with the metric of \(1.93\times 10^{-9}\) species.yr per kg of containers. Nevertheless, from the results, all impact categories impacted below than 0.0001 DALY for the Human Health damage category and below 0.00001 species.yr for the ecosystem damage category. These results would provide important insights to companies and manufacturers in commercializing the fully biobased takeout food containers. life cycle assessment; LCA; environmental profile; environmental impact; food packaging; takeout food container; biopolymer composite +
Footnote †: journal: Applied Soft  
encouraging results in terms of environmental burdens [5]. The measurement of \"green\" characteristics of a product or a system is very dependent on its environmental impacts and resource utilization. Life cycle assessment (LCA) is a standardized method to learn the potential environmental impacts of a product over its entire life-cycle [6]. LCA could also be a supporting tool in the design process to understand and assess the technical solutions to be employed in the production process so that the impacts could be minimized, not only from the product itself but also from the phases of use and the end-of-life [5]. LCA can also be utilized for product development and improvement, strategizing plans, making public policies, marketing decisions, and a few different applications [5,6]. Many packaging-related studies have already been applying LCA as a comparative assessment tool [7, 8, 9, 10]. The development of the natural fiber-reinforced biopolymer composite or termed \"green biocomposite\" with biodegradability and/or compostability attributes is seen as one solution to reduce municipal solid waste in landfills. The microorganisms produce water and enzymes to initiate biopolymer breakdown, then taken up by the microbial cells and finally converted into water, carbon dioxide, and biomass [11]. Many LCA analyses of biocomposite materials have been carried out to assess their environmental profiles. For example, [PERSON] and [PERSON] [7] compared their newly developed orange peel-derived pectin jelly and corn starch with low-density polyethylene (LDPE) film using a cradle-to-gate LCA approach. Their results revealed that the biocomposite film has a slightly higher impact than LDPE film and mainly resulted from electricity consumption for the extrusion process, film-forming, and modified starch addition.