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How plastics help reduce waste in food packaging

Sustainable Packaging Coalition's How2Recycle program is a standardized labeling system that communicates recycling instructions to the public.

Plastic packaging plays a key role in the quest for solutions to the food waste problem
Plastic packaging plays a key role in the quest for solutions to the food waste problem

Nearly half of all food is wasted in the food chain each year, from farm to consumer. In addition, about a third of the planet’s food goes to waste, often because of the way it looks, according to a study produced by National Geographic, Washington, D.C.

However, packaging advancements are providing solutions to food waste.

“The most important sustainability feature of a food packaging product is its capacity to preserve and protect food,” says Kyra Douglas, senior director, global regulatory affairs at
SPI: The Plastics Industry Trade Association, Washington, D.C. “Food is far more energy- and carbon-intensive to produce than packaging, and food generates the potent greenhouse gas methane when it decomposes. The properties required for a package to preserve and protect food will vary across different food types. No matter how lightweight a package is, for example, and no matter how much recycled content it contains, if it fails to do its food preservation job, then it makes a far worse environmental impact than a heavier package made of virgin material that performs properly.”

Plastic packaging, for example, helps reduce packaging weight and material, which in turn reduces the number of trucks delivering the same amount of product, thus decreasing costs, energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions, adds Douglas.

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