Reducing food waste
New packaging concepts can help reduce food waste
The use of plastic in food packaging is a double-edged sword. Of all the plastic waste produced worldwide, roughly 36% is used in packaging, including single-use plastic products for food and beverage containers, with approximately 85% ending up in landfills or as unregulated waste.
But the positives of using plastic packaging cannot be ignored. Plastic containers make it easy for consumers to travel with food and help protect sensitive items like eggs. More importantly, they allow perishable items to be stored in a sealed environment, extending their shelf life, keeping out contaminants and reducing food spoilage and waste. That is a significant benefit, considering an estimated 1.3 billion tons of food is wasted globally every year. According to Plastics Europe, the need for appropriate packaging and transportation solutions to bring food from farm to fork is one of the major causes of food spoilage. They point to the fact that throughout Europe, only 3% of all food produce is lost, but in developing countries-where those resources are scarce—that number jumps to 40%.
Petroleum-based polymers, such as polyethylene and polypropylene, are used to produce more than 50% of plastic packaging worldwide due to their mechanical, thermal and strong structural properties. These polymers are not biodegradable, but significant progress has been made over the past ten years by creating food packaging made from biodegradable polymers, specifically with polylactic acid (PLA). Derived from starch, PLA is non-toxic, compostable and is accepted as a Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) material by the US Food and Drug Administration.
In the past, the holy grail for packaging was to increase bio-content and to have it be biodegradable, but today it is the ability to include on the package that it is ‘home compostable’ without having to include any caveats for specific conditions. With its TUV OK home compostable certification, aPHA can act in synergy with PLA and many other biopolymers to improve the biodegradable profile of plastic packaging. It is sourced from renewable material and can be responsibly disposed of after use, making it possible for manufacturers to develop a truly circular packaging solution.