Packaging To Reduce Food Wastes

Packaging options can reduce food wastes. It can be one of the best practices to help divert usable foods to people in need before it becomes unusable.

Food loss and waste is a serious environmental concern. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, about one-third of all foods produced for human consumption get lost or wasted.

It makes 1.3 billion tons of food going into wastes. The value of this wasted food is US$680 billion in industrialized countries and US$310 billion in developing countries. One of the ways to reduce food wastes is to use plastic packaging that tends to extend shelf-life of any food item. This packaging option also prevents damages during transportation.

Environmental impact

Do you know that loss and waste of foods contribute to 8.2% of greenhouse gas emissions? When you prepare foods to ship or sell, you put into action some useful resources, including water, land, labor, energy, and money. This production procedure alone is responsible to contributing to climate change. 8.2% of all greenhouse emissions means that food wastes is responsible for as much emissions as those by road transport. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, foods wastes would be the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases after China and the US if it were a country.

Reducing food wastes

According to experts, packaging can play a significant role not only in protecting products and resources but also reducing food wastes.

Plastic packaging first prevents damage to food products during shipping or transportation. It then enhances the shelf life of the products. With the help of packaging, you can extend shelf life of beef from three days to 21 days. The type of plastic packaging also plays a significant role in how well the food is preserved.

Traditional polyethylene films can help some people, but this film can contribute to extra food wastage compared to multi-layer films that combine polyethylene with polyamide 6. Polyethylene turns out to be a poor performer when it comes to resisting punctures. It also doesn’t have quite impressive oxygen barrier properties.

Polyamide 6 forms an effective barrier against oxygen. It is also highly puncture-resistant. This film is highly suitable for products like meat and cheese.

Impact of food waste compared to that of plastic packaging

People usually talk about the impact of plastic on environment, but the fact of the matter is that it is not as much as that of food wastes. In general, the carbon footprint of food loss and waste is five times higher than that of the procedure involved in the production and optimization of plastic packaging.

The impact of plastic packaging wastes is a different subject. To combat this issue, companies are working on pyrolysis and gasification technologies to reduce the impact of plastic packaging wastes.

The fact of the matter is that sustainability can help reduce not only plastic packaging wastes but also food wastes. Another advantage of working measures to preserve foods and prevent wastes is that you can divert usable foods to ones in need.

All in all, the right plastic packaging of foods can help reduce the environmental impact of both plastic and foods.