Packaging's Role in Minimizing Food Loss and Waste Across the Supply Chain

Abstract

This paper presents the results of Australian research that explored the role of packaging in minimizing food waste in the supply chain. The economic, social and environmental costs of food waste have been well documented elsewhere. This research contributes to the debate by identifying opportunities to reduce or recover food loss and waste through improved packaging.In the fresh produce sector, e.g. waste can be reduced through the use of packaging that improves product protection, ventilation and temperature control. Other opportunities include improved design of distribution packaging to reduce damage in transport and handling; design of primary packaging to reduce waste in the home, e.g. through appropriate portion sizes and by reducing confusion over date labels; and the use of retail-ready packaging that minimizes handling and improves stock rotation in stores. An important conclusion of the study is that packaging can have a significant impact on reducing food waste in the food supply chain; and in some cases, a focus on reducing food waste will require more rather than less packaging. Packaging developers must therefore consider the product and its packaging as a complete system to optimize sustainability.

“Packaging Logistics” for improving performance in supply chains: the role of meta-standards implementation

“…Beyond the traditional and basic view of packaging as a means of protecting products (Williams et al, 2008;Verghese et al, 2015), over the last few years, new design requirements have been added for packaging: on the one hand, to improve the differentiation capacity of the product (commercial function), and on the other, to improve the efficiency of the product at a logistic and production level (logistic function).…”

The environmental impact of packaging in food supply chains—does life cycle assessment of food provide the full picture?

“…European Council (1994), and research (Beitzen-Heineke et al 2017;Tencati et al 2016;Tua et al 2017) that focus on packaging prevention. On the other hand, in the recent debate about food waste, the protective function Responsible editor: Hans-Jürgen Garvens * Katrin Molina-Besch katrin.molina-besch@plog.lth.se 1 of packaging has been highlighted as an important environmental benefit (Bertoluci et al 2014;Verghese et al 2015;Williams et al 2008). Several studies have shown that the indirect environmental impact of packaging is of greater relative importance in many food supply chains than its direct environmental impact (Büsser and Jungbluth 2009;Silvenius et al 2014;Wikström and Williams 2010).…”

“…The indirect environmental impact of packaging is the impact caused by the influence that packaging has on the food product's life cycle. It includes the influence on the amount of food waste and the possibilities of recovering food waste (Verghese et al 2015), the influence on transport efficiency in the food supply chain ) and the influence on consumers behaviour affecting food transport, storage and preparation in households (Zampori and Dotelli 2014). Life cycle assessment (LCA) appears to be a useful method for performing a complete analysis of the environmental impact of food packaging systems.…”

“…These authors argue that many packaging LCAs neglect the influence of packaging on the overall environmental impact in the food supply chain, for example regarding its influence on food waste and on logistical efficiency. Thus, they call for the indirect environmental impact of packaging to be included in environmental assessments of packaging (Verghese et al 2015;Williams and Wikström 2010). As a result, in packaging LCA literature, there are more and more published studies that follow these recommendations such as packaging LCAs that include food waste (Conte et al 2015;Gutierrez et al 2017;Manfredi et al 2015).…”

“…While several authors have highlighted the importance of considering both the indirect and the direct environmental impact of packaging in environmental assessments of packaging (Verghese et al 2015;Williams and Wikström 2010), there is a lack of knowledge about how this recommendation has influenced LCA methodology. In packaging LCA literature from the last decade, several studies (e.g.…”