By now we’ve all seen the light brown, eco-friendly food packaging and plates offered by health food stores and conscientious eating establishments. They’re often made of recycled materials and are recyclable on top of that. We can feel good eating off of those plates. But have you ever walked out of a coffee shop, enjoying your beverage, only to pass by a trashcan overflowing with paper cups and brown sleeves?
Recyclable serving utensils, while awesome, are slowly becoming not enough. Ever since we watched Willie Wonka take a bite of his tea cup, our gears have been spinning. The food packaging industry is a huge one, with many facets. They need to make packaging that stands up to the handling, but also is pretty enough to attract people to the product.
Entire stores have opened all around the world that offer no packaging at all- but what do we do when packaging is necessary?
Innovation is the key.
Here are 5 environmentally friendly food packaging advances for which to be on the lookout
- Packaging that reduces food waste– Have you ever been frustrated that you couldn’t reach the very bottom of your peanut butter jar, or that the dribbles of oil simply won’t leave the inside of the bottle? LiquiGlide has commercialized a coating developed by an MIT lab that, although it doesn’t change the smell or taste of food, creates a “permanently wet, slippery surface” that could save over 1 million tons of food waste each year.
- Smaller packaging– Many people in urban areas don’t have space to store huge, half-full bags of chips, or big cups with noodles only at the very bottom, in their cupboards. On top of that, if they’re walking home from the grocery store (or taking the subway) they can’t carry these bulky packages. Never fear, there is a solution on the horizon. A Swedish design firm is working on creating tiny, compressed packages that become full-sized when hot water is added.
- Packaging we can eat– This one’s the biggie. It’s happening all around us. Coffee cups made of cookie, lined with heat-resistant white chocolate, cupcake liners made of potato starch, and perhaps most famously, WikiCells’ edible food wrappers, that, like the skin of a grape, have no taste but protect foods such as frozen yogurt. Edible packaging is great because it leaves no waste at all.
- *Poof* packaging– a newer facet of the low-to-no waste food packaging market, *poof* packaging simply disappears. MonoSol LLC, for example, created water-soluble bags for cooking rice or oatmeal. The bag itself dissolves and all that’s left is a pre-portioned meal. There’s a lot of room for growth in this area of the market and there will be plenty more in this pipeline.
- Sell-by packaging– we’ve all heard the debate about sell-by dates. Are they arbitrary? Should we pay closer attention to them? People could be throwing away tons of perfectly safe food because of that stamp, but how do we know (other than the age-old “if it smells off, chuck it” method) if food is really spoiling? Scientists are working on packaging such as plastic wrap that has tiny embedded sensors that will let us know when our food is going bad.
There are plenty of opportunities and advances to be made in the field of food packaging and food conservation. Come talk to us on Twitter (@arris_search) and let us know if you know of any cool packaging that’s environmentally friendly.