Recent Trends in Food Packaging: A Review

Abstract

The desire of convenience for handling, storage, transportation and maintaining the shelf life of perishable foods, a concept to packaging was developed. Historians believe that during the nomadic days, materials such as nuts or gourds, leaves and animal skins were used to store and transport items. With an ongoing day to day development in packaging features such as active and intelligent packaging, the raw material being used has also been improvised. Single use of plastics has become an integral part of our daily life which makes our life easier but has also been responsible for polluting the environment and creating imbalance to our ecosystem. There has been a continuous interest for developing and using biodegradable packing material to mitigate the damage and lead today's society in a sustainable way. In search of sustainable practices we have also come across through mycelium based packaging material designed by Evocative design, which can be grown quickly on the agricultural waste and are capable of replacing the polystyrene with their characteristics such as capability of moulding, biodegradability, insulation and shock absorbing properties.