In much discussion about sustainability and environmental issues, packaging is usually portrayed as a villain.
For all its bad reputation however, its role in reducing food waste plays a far more positive role than many people give it credit for, Dr Helen Williams, an expert on environmental and energy systems from Sweden's Karlstad University says.
Addressing a recent roundtable event on the Marketing Impacts of Packaging Sustainability, organised by RMIT and the Sustainable Packaging Alliance (SPA), Dr Williams says even many brand owners are unaware of packaging's wider environmental benefits.
“For the past 50 years or so, packaging has been condemned as something bad for the environment, and there has not been much talk about its advantages,” she says.
“It's got to the point where even many brand owners themselves do not see the benefits. They just see it as something to reduce. It will take some time to change that perspective, but it really should be done.”
Speaking to delegates from the spheres of academia, brand and packaging design, marketing and the FMCG sector, Dr Williams says that despite popular perceptions, food waste has a greater impact on the environment than packaging.
Consumption the key to waste
“We have food waste in all of the stages of the supply chain, from agriculture to storage and processing to packaging to distribution and consumption. But consumption is the really huge part of it [food waste] and the hardest part to tackle.”
Dr Williams, who is on a six month secondment to RMIT's school of design, says research indicates consumers waste from 20-30 per cent of the food they buy. In Australia, this accounts for approximately $5.2 billion worth of food wasted each year.
Of this, packaging issues only accounted for a small proportion of the food wasted: spoilage caused 40 per cent, overcooking or not using leftovers 25 per cent, products passing their expiry date 15 per cent and food thrown away because consumers were uncertain about the quality accounted for another 15 per cent.
By contrast, food that is wasted through packaging issues accounts for about 10 per cent, Dr Williams says.
She explains that this is also reflected in the total environmental impact of the food industry.
“You have to look at the total offer – the food, the packaging and other peripheral matters. When you consider this, about 90-95 per cent of the environmental impact of the food industry comes from food. Packaging is only about 5-10 per cent of the impact.”
She says that rather than exacerbating environmental damage from the food industry, packaging serves to lessen it.
“If you can use the packaging to reduce food wastage, it is a good environmental approach, and packaging is there for protection that is its primary reason for use,” Dr Williams says.
Packaging attributes that can influence and improve the food waste chain include providing physical protection to the contents, the ability to control portions so consumers don't cook too much food and the provision of information such as best-by, recycling, dietary and nutritional data.
Dr Williams says consumers took for granted these days that packaging would provide protection for contents, product information and aesthetic appeal. Increasingly, however, they were also starting to expect that packaging should be hygienic, user-friendly and easy to open.
Beyond that, she says, attributes such as resealablity, the use of recyclable materials in packs and producing packs that are sized appropriately to consumers' needs were seen as “attractive” but not vital.
Dr Williams concludes by saying that rather than being a huge contributor to environmental waste, increased packaging could provide net environmental benefits.
“Maybe it is better to use better or more packaging, if it helps reduce food loss,” she says.
Modelling the life cycle
Following up on Dr Williams’ presentation, Dr Enda Crossin of RMIT's centre for design outlined how many of the misconceptions regarding packaging's impact on the environment could be refuted using the life cycle assessment (LCA) model.
Explaining that LCAs are designed to measure the total impact of an item, from the extraction of raw materials from the ground or plants, through to production, distribution, use and end-of-life, Dr Crossin says the concept had its foundation in the packaging industry.
“LCAs had their very roots in packaging. In the 1970s, Coca-Cola started doing LCAs, and since then a lot of work has been done using the concept to investigate different scenarios around packaging.”
He says that one of the most surprising outcomes of LCAs for many people was how they challenged many of the accepted opinions and attitudes around packaging.
“What makes your pack sustainable? To most people it's things like biodegradability, recyclability and renewability,” Dr Crossin says.
“The simple rule is that at the end of the day, you don't get something from nothing.”
LCAs were valuable, he says, in dispelling many of the myths regarding packaging.
“LCAs try to model reality. They can give you greater clarity of what your supply chain is, can align packaging design decisions with corporate sustainability strategies, give you targets you can aim towards and respond to supply chain and consumer concerns,” he says.
Dr Crossin says LCAs help to clarify descriptions and behaviours of materials that don't necessarily translate into better environmental outcomes.
“They show that you can never rely on 'gut feel' about whether a material or process is environmentally better or not – reality can be different.
“For example, they can show that while you can cut down on emissions in one process of the life cycle of a product, that may actually increase impacts in other areas, like particulates.
“And despite much conventional wisdom here in Australia, they can show it's not always better to buy locally.”
Summing up, Dr Crossin explains that LCAs can't guarantee the results wanted by an organisation, but can give an idea of how someone's product is better (or worse) than their competitors' products or processes.
Food packaging has a bad reputation, but it is actually a valuable means of eliminating food waste.
