Perspectives on sustainable food packaging:– is bio-based plastics a solution?

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Highlights

  • Bio-based plastic can reduce climate impact.

  • Recycling reduces environmental and climate impact.

  • The packaging/food systems should be assessed including both climate and environmental impacts.

Abstract

Background

The demand for more sustainable packaging materials is increasing. However, the multidisciplinary and complexity of this topic often lead to misconceptions among food packaging designers and producers, which challenge the creation of more sustainable food packaging systems.

Scope and approach

This manuscript presents in a holistic perspective the most relevant parameters that need to be considered for sustainability in food packaging and aims to increase the awareness of food and packaging producers to create effective sustainable packaging materials for foods.

Key Findings and Conclusions

The use of bio-based plastic packaging materials contribute to create more sustainable food packaging materials, comparatively to conventional plastic packaging materials, when looking at climate impact responses. Although bio-based plastic packaging materials have reduced climate impact, there are other environmental impacts (e.g. eutrophication, use of water and pesticides, effects on biodiversity) that are less favorable for using bio-based materials and should also be considered. Recycling of the packaging significantly contributes to reduce its environmental and climate impacts. The sum of the climate and environmental impacts of the packaging should be seen together with the food it protects. The combined system should be assessed in its entire lifecycle and optimized through the design, production and end of life of the packaging material to improve its sustainability.

Introduction

Packaging materials are part of our daily life. When it concerns foodstuffs, they play a pivotal role to ensure food products are preserved with a desired lifetime and subsequent optimization of space during handling, shipping, and storage for a minimum of wastage (Russell, 2014)(de Léis et al., 2017).

For many years petroleum-based polymer materials have been used as plastics packaging, such as polypropylene (PP), polyester (PET), polyethylene (PE) and polystyrene (PS) (Salwa et al., 2019). The production of plastic packaging has increased twentyfold since 1964 and represents the largest application of polymers with 26% of the total volume. Due to its many good characteristics (e.g. lightweight and good barrier properties) plastics have increasingly replaced other packaging materials, and the production is expected to continue growing to the double volume within the next 20 years (MacArthur et al., 2016).

Although plastic packaging have been performing successfully in terms of their functionality, the production of petroleum-based plastics releases greenhouse gases (in particular CO2), and in their disposal, due to the lack of collection or proper handling, plastics tend to end up in landfills, become trash on land and water streams, and ultimately contaminate the oceans (Geyer et al., 2017; Salwa et al., 2019). Industry is struggling to find a more environmentally friendly way of producing and using plastic. The overall question is how can plastic become (more) sustainable?

In this context, food-packaging producers and food industries have been working towards the use of abundant, low cost, renewable, and biodegradable alternatives to the traditional, nonrenewable petroleum-based resources (Chi et al., 2020), such as the bio-based plastics (Kawashima et al., 2019). They offer the possibility to reduce the use of petroleum resources with potential subsequent reduction of the CO2 emissions (Salwa et al., 2019).

It is estimated that the eco-friendly food packaging market will increase, with a shift in consumer preference towards materials that are recyclable and “eco-friendly”. However, there is still great uncertainty about the potential and possible advantages of bio-based plastics compared to conventional plastics and several misconceptions exist.

To reduce the generation of plastic waste, the EU Commission set an ambitious goal of 55% of plastic packaging recirculation in 2025, and all plastics are recyclable (or reusable) in 2030, following a Circular Economy approach. This puts a pressure on increased recycling and reuse of plastic packaging also for food, as this represents the largest fraction of all plastic packaging in EU (Plastic Europe, 2015).

Evaluating the sustainability of food packaging requires a wider perspective comprising several aspects (Russell, 2014). This should include the use of materials that: create no greenhouse gas emissions, have the potential to be recycled or reused, generate zero landfill waste, reduce water use, are made using renewable energy, do not produce air pollution and do not harm human health, among many other considerations.

Although progress has been made towards the creation of alternative packaging systems, there is not yet a perfect a solution that can meet the many criteria for sustainability and ultimately fulfill the functionality of the food packaging: to preserve and deliver the packed foods in good condition (Russell, 2014). This manuscript will identify and discuss the most relevant indicators in a holistic perspective to create more sustainable food packaging systems.

Section snippets

Materials used in food packaging

Plastic packaging (rigid and flexible) constitutes the main type of food packaging(Asgher et al., 2020) followed by paper and board (Muller et al., 2017)(Your 2020 Complete Guide for Food Packaging, 2020). Fig. 1 displays common plastic materials used in packaging and Table 1 shows examples where those materials can be applied.

Packaging functionality

Packaging should preserve the food quality to improve its shelf life. Packaging mechanical, thermal and barrier properties (e.g. to light, moisture, water vapor, and oxygen/other gases), should match the needs of the given food. Thus, the food packaging system must be able to obstruct either moisture gain or loss (depending on the type of food), control the permeation of water vapor, oxygen, carbon dioxide and other volatile compounds and prevent all types of contamination (Salwa et al., 2019).

Chemical food safety of packaging

Sustainability of food packaging

Sustainability can be defined as meeting the needs of the present generations without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs (World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987). The concept of sustainability comprises three dimensions: economic, environmental, and social. This paper focuses on the environmental dimension.

Production of food uses energy, water, fertilizers and often pesticides, and it causes emissions of pollutants, including greenhouse gases, in

Discussion and perspectives about sustainable food packaging

Sustainability is becoming a main priority in the food industry, and food packaging is one of the areas where food industries should invest. Therefore, there is the demand to produce and use materials that are: i) safe and without risks to human health or the environment during the packaging life cycle; ii) matching the market needs in terms of performance and cost; iii) preferentially produced, transported and recycled (or in special cases composted) using renewable types of energy and iv)

Concluding remarks

New innovative plastic packaging materials (bio-based as well as petroleum based) for food should prioritize and optimize the following parameters in their design as the main indicators for more sustainable packaging: i) the materials should have the most optimal barriers to improve shelf life of the food and reduce food loss; ii) the packaging should be designed for (mechanical) recycling, iii) bio-based materials should be efficiently produced from second generation feedstock. Preference goes

Acknowledgments

The authors acknowledge the support provided by the Danish Food Innovation and Food & Bio Cluster Denmark.

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