The packaging industry is on track to achieving carbon neutral footprint in packaging solutions by ensuring recyclability, degradability, safety and effectiveness of the packaging product, says Angelica Buan in this report.
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he packaging industry generates a large portion of plastic waste, representing about US$80-$120 billion loss to the global economy every year, according to the World Economic Forum. Thus, the sector is transitioning to using environmentally-friendly sustainable packaging: responsibly sourced, recyclable, and designed to be safe and effective for use during its entire life cycle. Although developing sustainable packaging involves the entire supply chain, sectors that are major users of plastic packaging such as food and beverage, cosmetics and hygiene, agriculture and others, are forging alliances with packaging manufacturers to come up with innovative and eco-friendly solutions. Clearly, the “take-make-dispose” packaging model is passé, in lieu of the growing demand for sustainable packaging. Alternative materials with no burden to environment Protecting the planet’s diversity and natural resources as well as reducing the environmental footprint are barometers for sustainable packaging. REFUCOAT, an EU-funded three-year project, focuses on developing fully-recyclable food packaging with enhanced gas barrier properties and new functionalities using high performance coatings as an alternative to current metallised and modified atmospheric packaging (MAP).
REFUCOAT is developing various packaging structures: BIOPET/coating/BIOPE for crisps; PLA/PHA/coating/BOPLA for breadcrumbs; BOPLA film/coating for chicken meat and PLA/PHA tray with active coating containing bacteriophages
Materials News
Climate-positivity with sustainable packaging The consortium, composed of 12 partners including MIPLAST, IRIS, Grupo APEX, Manor Farm, Dacsa, Biopolis, Thunen, CIB, AIMPLAS, EUFIC, Fraunhofer and AINIA, will be utilising middle chain polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA), biopolymers synthesised by microorganisms, such as flour. With low moisture permeability, PHA is a good alternative for fresh meat packaging and since it is biodegradable by composting, PHA can be converted into fertiliser, according to REFUCOAT. REFUCOAT adds that it also wants to explore the use of polyglycolic acid (PGA) as a high-barrier coating for biobased food packaging films, since it is fully biodegradable and has good compatibility with other biopolymers and polyolefins. It also has excellent water barrier properties, making it a promising material for use in food packaging, as an alternative to metallic coatings since these require a complex and expensive recycling process. Relatively, REFUCOAT has developed for the first time an efficient process for producing high-yield glycolic acid (GA) – PGA’s precursor, and which is currently produced from fossil-based raw materials. REFUCOAT is also exploring the use of natural antifungal, antibacterial and antioxidant substances for final packaging structures for fresh chicken meat (a breeding ground for salmonella and other bacteria), snacks and cereals. For this, REFUCOAT has developed an active coating that contains antimicrobial bacteriophages to attack unwanted bacterial growth. For dry foods such as crisps and breadcrumbs, which need to stay crunchy for a long time, while not losing or taking up any flavours to/from the environment they are stored in, an antioxidant coating is being developed, based on bioactive herb essential oils. Specifically, the innovative barrier and active coatings developed during the project are combined with commercial bio-PE, bioPET and REFUCOAT PHA and polylactic acid (PLA) to produce packaging structures for chicken meat, breadcrumbs and crisps. On a similar endeavour, a circular biaxiallyoriented polypropylene (BOPP) film called LOOPP and renewable NOPP (Natural BOPP) film for flexible packaging have been developed by Italian BOPP film producer Irplast utilising materials firm Sabic’s PP polymers from its Trucircle portfolio. The NOPP film is OCTOBER 2020
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