Upcycled Metalized Snack-Packaging Waste for Daylighting: A Simulation-Based Study on Sustainable Light-Shelf Design

The artificial lighting demand of buildings is a controllable sustainability lever, whereas metalized food-packaging waste (i.e., multilayer polymer-aluminum films used for barrier protection) is difficult to recycle and routinely landfilled or incinerated, representing an underexplored circular-economy opportunity. This simulation-based feasibility study connected both objectives by investigating whether metalized snack-packaging waste can function as a daylight-redirecting surface on a faceted interior light shelf. Five configurations were simulated in VELUX Daylight Visualizer 3 using Ankara’s EnergyPlus Weather climate file (39.93° N): a no-shelf baseline (S1), white (ρ = 0.80) and metalized (ρ = 0.80–0.88) flat shelves (S2, S3), and faceted equivalents (S4, S5). None of the five scenarios met the EN 17037:2018 sufficiency threshold (DA300 ≥ 50%); the best configuration, S5 (faceted, metalized), reached DA300 = 40.23%. Within this limitation, S5 outperformed all comparators, averaging 3116 lux (9.6× baseline) and achieving a uniformity ratio of 0.823. Faceted geometry increased illuminance by 1.74–1.78× over an equivalent flat metalized shelf; metalized flat shelves outperformed the white ones by 1.44–1.54×, except in September, when high solar altitude caused a 0.83–0.89× reversal, eliminated by faceting. S5 reduced artificial lighting dependency from 78.42% to 59.77% of occupied hours (~101 kWh/yr, first-year estimate) and nearly halved critical daylighting-deficit hours (49%). However, it exceeded the 2000 lux useful-daylight ceiling in ~55% of occupied hours, indicating that glare mitigation is necessary for deployment. These preliminary results warrant further experimental and life-cycle work before the sustainability benefits of the circular economy pathway can be established. A sensitivity analysis confirms that S5’s daylighting advantage persists, though at reduced magnitude, under both a conservative reflectance assumption (ρ = 0.80) and a more energy-representative window-to-wall ratio (47.5%).