AI-generated summary
Packaging, particularly polymer-based plastic packaging, has seen a dramatic increase over the past decade, doubling from 180 million to over 350 million tonnes. Its popularity stems from its mechanical strength, low cost, and ability to preserve food and other products, making it a staple of modern supply chains. However, the widespread use of plastic packaging poses significant environmental challenges. Derived mainly from petroleum and fossil fuels, plastic production involves crude oil extraction and pollution. Most plastic packaging is single-use and rarely recycled, with the majority incinerated or discarded, releasing harmful microplastics and methane into ecosystems.
Emerging solutions focus on developing biodegradable, compostable, or bio-based plastics from agricultural by-products and waste, such as potato peelings and plant residues. These innovative materials aim to close the loop by transforming organic waste into packaging that protects subsequent crops, increasing circularity and reducing environmental impact. Although still largely experimental and more costly than traditional plastics, advances and subsidies are improving their competitiveness.
Non-food single-use packaging also faces challenges, but alternatives exist. Durable materials like steel offer a sustainable substitute, as they require more initial energy but are reusable and highly recyclable, reducing waste over time. Practices such as using ceramic cups and steel straws in workplaces and restaurants exemplify non-technological shifts toward reducing single-use plastics and promoting sustainability.
Biodegradable, compostable or bio-based packaging is the future of sustainability in food transport
Packaging, especially polymer-based (plastic), They have doubled in mass over the past decade, from 180 million tonnes to more than 350 million tonnes. Their mechanical properties, low cost and ability to preserve food, drink and other substances made them the success of the 80s, 90s and 2000s, a trajectory they have not abandoned. Is it possible for society to reach new green spaces through the use of more ecological packaging or a reduction in its volume?
What is the current problem with packaging?
As highlighted in the report ‘Smart Agriculture: the challenge of sustainable food’, by the Bankinter Innovation Foundation, “food packaging is fundamental in the food supply chain, playing key roles in the protection, conservation and transport of products”. They are extraordinarily safe, convenient and accessible, cheap and easy to handle.
But this benefit comes at a significant cost to the planet. Namely:
- Plastic packaging is derived from petroleum and/or fossil fuels, which requires the extraction of crude oil and all the associated environmental problems.
- Packaging is usually single-use, so it is used so rarely that its low manufacturing cost is high.
- Except for a very low fraction of polymers that have very few recyclability cycles before deteriorating, the bulk are incinerated.
- If they are not burned to recover some energy, plastics release microplastics that affect living organisms and release methane.
New polymers to manufacture new single-use packaging
It is estimated that 4 out of every 10 kilograms of plastic packaging ends up in the food sector. This has no substitute for these containers that protect food from its collection, washing, handling and shipment to the point of sale. There is simply no substitute for polymers, but it does seem that there will be substitute polymers.
New biodegradable, compostable or bio-based plastics (they are not exactly the same), of which Europe is a world leader, are manufactured with all kinds of raw materials, although these have an important characteristic: they are usually the by-product or waste of another industry, productive activity or sector.
For example, the bioplastic derived from potato peeling —which can be processed to be applied in pharmaceutical, food, nutraceutical or cosmetic industries, among others – is a good substitute for some food packaging. Other processes for the reuse of plant waste consider carrots, parsley, chicory and cauliflower to be interesting.
From organic waste to food-protecting material
It is fascinating to discover that it is possible to package organic products such as strawberries, avocados or peppers in packaging derived from residues from previous crops. The fundamental objective of new materials is to increase the circularity of materials, especially when these are organic products that have had a high environmental cost.
The crops with which the world’s population feeds represent one of the greatest impacts on the planet, both because of the fossil fuels required by industrialized processes (which are changing to other technical but traditionalist-ecological ones such as permaculture) and because of the amount of waste that is generated by their losses and packaging.
In a few decades, it will be a common occurrence that food losses due to reasons as varied as climate or inability to manage (for example, that a crop cannot be harvested on time) will use that organic matter to manufacture single-use packaging in which the next harvest will be protected. This circularity is now experimental or only occurs in laboratory conditions, although pilots (which still require expensive processes compared to plastic) are giving good results. As they are subsidized with green premiums and the production of bioplastics increases, their competitiveness will mean that they will be used by default.
Non-technological solutions to the use of single-use packaging
And what about non-food packaging? For example, single-use cups, plastic bottles, those hard plastic coffee spoons. Is it possible to make use of new materials in this area? Yes, and no. The truth is that for a large part of single-use processes there is already a sustainable substitute.
For example, a steel canteen requires the use of an amount of energy tens or even hundreds of times greater than the manufacture of a PET plastic bottle. However, the bottle has a number of uses, and the steel canteen is an object that could be bequeathed to future generations and with a recyclability rate close to 100%. One of the solutions to the use of plastic packaging is not to use plastic, but durable materials.
That is why the offices are including the presence of dishwashers and ceramic cups where employees or guests can drink without having to dispose of the container later; or the reason why steel straws are already being used in restaurants. There is no reason to make objects with petroleum-derived compounds that can be used durable for decades.
