Packaging – the ubiquitous poster child of litter and rubbish. Love it or hate it, there is no doubt that packaging serves a purpose – it protects our goods from damage and germs, and can of course be used as a marketing tool. In the UK, we produce around 10 million tonnes of the stuff a year, but as it’s a secondary product and often unwanted after it has served its primary purpose (few of us go out to specifically buy packaging), it is perhaps the most conspicuous form of waste out there. Indeed, several countries, including United Arab Emirates, Morocco, and Yemen, are so fed up with plastic packaging polluting their environments, that they have pledged to ban non-biodegradable plastics from entering the country. The UK has yet to go that far, but it is working on waste reduction.

The third phase of WRAP’s voluntary commitment to reduce packaging waste, the Courtauld Commitment, was launched earlier this year with the target of reducing ‘traditional grocery ingredient, product and packaging waste’ in the grocery supply chain by three per cent by 2015 (from a 2012 baseline). But despite these efforts to reduce packaging waste, WRAP does acknowledge that it is needed in some cases. Two months before Courtauld 3 was launched, WRAP produced the report ‘Consumer Attitudes to Food Waste and Food Packaging’ in partnership with the Industry Council for Packaging & the Environment (INCPEN), The Packaging Federation, Food and Drink Federation (FDF), Kent Waste Partnership and British Retail Consortium (BRC) looking at the role packaging plays in reducing food waste.

According to WRAP, 81 per cent of consumers believe that packaging is a ‘major environmental problem’, while 57 per cent think it is ‘wasteful and unnecessary’. However, ‘concern about packaging reduces in response to more information’, WRAP’s research found. INCPEN’s Director, Jane Bickerstaffe explains: “We take for granted all the benefits that packaging gives us, such as keeping food or products safe and fresh, but we don’t really think about how packaging does it…you don’t tend to look at a tin of baked beans and think, ‘My god, that’s a brilliantly designed tin – my beans are faultless.’ But it is necessary, and it does serve a purpose.”

Indeed, Bickerstaffe argues that without packaging, the world would see a lot more waste: “There’s this misconception that packaging waste is worse than food waste, because the latter rots down, but that couldn’t be more wrong. A few grammes of packaging going to waste is minimal in environmental impact compared to the equivalent grammes of food going to waste. It’s not just the food itself that is wasted then, but also all the resources – the water and energy – that went into growing that food, too. We’ve found that in resource terms, one unit of packaging, say plastic film, protects 10 units of food, so that one unit has done its job.”

However, there are some that argue with that train of thinking. Looking at the other end of the spectrum, there are some retailers that are trying to move completely away from packaging. Set up in 2006 by Catherine Conway, the London refill shop Unpackaged was launched from a frustration over the unnecessary use of packaging. Conway tells me: “I used to shop at a health food shop where I could go and refill my Ecover goods, but I would also buy dry goods and take them home and put them straight into a jar, so I was frustrated that I was left with this unnecessary packaging. I thought it was crazy that I couldn’t cut that step out and just take my jars to the shop to be refilled. That was how the idea started.”

The Hackney shop now sells food and produce in no packaging (or as little as possible) to customers, who bring their own containers to be refilled – be that Tupperware pots, bowls or things they have in their bags at the time, such as envelopes.

“There’s a whole social, environmental and economic argument for what we are doing. Imagine you buy a bottle of washing up liquid once a month for a year – that’s 12 bottles for a product that can just go in the same receptacle. So we’re trying to remove the need for unnecessary packaging, and promote a shift away from wasteful, supply chain-heavy shopping in supermarkets, to more locally-based, wholesome retail. By buying local produce, by default, you will be bringing home less packaging.”

Looking to the industry itself, Conway voices concern with the unsustainable nature of capturing hard-to-recycle packaging: “The industry has created such clever packaging and then managed to shift the blame to local authorities not being able to recycle it. When you think how many billions they are pushing into their packaging design, no wonder the local authorities haven’t got the resources or the expertise to be able to separate all of them.”

But why is being sustainable so hard for the packaging industry? Sion Stanfield, Owner and Company Director of eco-procure, a procurement consultancy, and former Group Head of Packaging, Recycling and Waste at Tesco, says that it’s down to being economically, as well as environmentally, sustainable: “There’s a lot of people doing a lot of good things by making packaging more sustainable from a resources or carbon point of view, but it’s hard to do it in a way that competes economically with designs that are less sustainable. For example, buying a tonne of virgin material to make packaging might cost £1,000, but to actually process recyclable content to a stage where it can be used again, it might cost £1,100. So those working in closed-loop plastics for example, are actually losing a lot of money, millions of pounds a year, to keep their prices competitive, even though it’s more environmentally sensible – it’s about 65 per cent carbon saving by using recycled content compared to virgin.”

To counter this and promote the use of recyclable material in packaging, Stanfield points to the work that the British Plastics Federation (BPF) is doing in regards to lobbying for the Packaging Recovery Note (PRN) system to be reformed. The BPF has released a white paper that seeks breaks on obligations for manufacturers or retailers that use closed-loop or recyclable materials in their packaging: “At Tesco, I had an obligation for 35,000 tonnes of plastic material per annum, but the BPF is saying that if I could prove that I was using 5,000 tonnes of recyclable plastic in the materials I put into the marketplace, my obligation would then reduce to 30,000". Indeed, wih plastic PRNs currently coming in at around £70 per tonne, that would amount to a saving of £350,000. “What we need is for infrastructure to incentivise those to do the right thing environmentally without losing out financially,” he adds.

However, even when producers do try to use more sustainable sources of material, such as bioplastics, the effects aren’t always positive, as Bickerstaffe explains: “There are bioplastics that can breakdown, degrade or compost that are made from oil, and there are some that can break down that are made from starches and sugars. But there also some that are made from biomaterials, which can’t break down – so it’s a really complicated area – and it’s only getting more complicated. They can do a useful job of preserving their contents, but the issue is with the end-of-life.”

Indeed, communicating with the public on how to recycle common materials such as plastic has been hard enough as it is (consumers are still frequently confused about which plastics they can and cannot recycle) and adding into the mix bioplastics that do not have a standardised end-of-life channel makes life even harder. “We have to be careful that we don’t mess up the systems that we have in place that operate well now”, says Bickerstafffe. “Some bioplastics if they get into the plastic recycling streams cause real problems – if you have something like PLA which is a plastic that biodegrades, or a group called oxo-biodegradables that break down, and put them into a regular plastic recycling stream, then they start breaking down and destabilising the recyclate that you make – which makes it all redundant. But there are others like Coca-Cola’s PlantBottle [made from 22.5 per cent plant-based PET], which doesn’t cause any problems and can go in the recycling. Quite frankly, I’m not sure if busy people, who have trouble enough recycling general recyclables, will have the time or patience to try and understand which bioplastic goes where.”

It’s this idea of packaging innovation harming systems that are already in place that has some in the industry, including Stanfield, worried: “The industry works in silos – packaging design, waste collection, and reprocessors are often isolated from one another – so though designers in packaging may be doing well and get the kudos of being more environmentally and socially responsible, there’s little communication from the waste and recycling industry on exactly how their packaging is affecting the end-of-life system…

“We may be moving in the right direction in terms of material sustainability, but without engaging with and educating the consumer on how to properly source-segregate that material, we’re creating a myriad of new problems and could make the situation worse than we’re currently in.”

Packaging Innovation

Some designers have chosen to look further up the waste hierarchy by making packaging that creates the minimal amount of waste possible, rather than by just making it recyclable or recoverable. One example of packaging innovation in designing out waste is Ecovative’s Mushroom® Packaging. Using ‘mushroom technology’, the packaging harnesses mycelium (mushroom ‘roots’) to bond together agricultural waste particles such as seed husks or plant stalks. After a week of growing in a dark room, the Mushroom Material is then dried, which stops the growth. The resulting product is a renewable, home compostable alternative to plastic. An Ecovative spokesperson explains: “Our first commercial product is called Mushroom Packaging, a protective packaging currently in use by industry leaders like Dell, Crate & Barrel, and PUMA.

This home-compostable packaging material is already replacing thousands of plastic foam packaging parts.” The company is now extending the mushroom material for other applications, such as construction, to “displace harmful plastics and foams wherever possible”. So long as the material is actually composted, rather than sent to landfill, that has to be a good thing.

Ecovative's Mushroom® Packaging

Another innovation garnering much attention recently is Harmless-Dissolve, a bag that dissolves in water, and can be composted. The manufacturer, Cyberpac, claims that the water-soluble polymer can completely biodegrade into ‘naturally occurring substances’ when disposed of in a ‘composting environment, in a dishwasher or in a washing machine’, and has no harmful residues (the film is edible, but reportedly tastes ‘horrible’). Further, the manufacturer claims that the material is five times stronger than polythene.

The material has already been adopted to deliver copies of the magazine Creative Review, with Cyberpac claiming that it is the industry’s ‘first’ clear, compostable bag, printed in biodegradable inks with a biodegradable peel and seal lip.

A spokesperson for the company said: “Harmless-Dissolve is non-toxic and is degraded by micro-organisms, moulds and yeasts. These organisms can occur in both artificial environments, such as anaerobic digesters, activated sewage sludge and composts and natural environments such as aquatic systems and soil. The micro-organisms use Harmless-Dissolve as a food source by producing a variety of enzymes that are capable of reacting with it. In the end the bag becomes carbon dioxide, water and biomass.”

Going one step further to the space-age of packaging design in waste reduction, is MonoSol’s edible packaging, Vivos Edible Delivery Systems. Utilising similar technology to what is currently used in dissolvable laundry tablets (often known as ‘liquitabs’ or ‘pods’), the water-soluble and edible pouches are made from ‘natural polymers’ that disappear and release their contents when exposed to hot or cold liquids, and are safe for consumption. Though the product, which can reportedly withstand being dropped or squashed without bursting, is yet to hit shelves, MonoSol expects that it will be able to design-out packaging from liquid consumables, such as coffees, teas, soups and gravies.

But could edible packaging really become a reality – would consumers be willing to eat something that has been on a shelf for days and handled by unknown persons? The concept already works, of course, for many naturally protected pieces of fruits and veg – like apples, pears, mushrooms, peppers and so on – but Bickerstaffe voices scepticism with the reality of this concept: “Edible and compostable packaging has been around for a while – nearly 20 years – and though they get a lot of attention in the media and we keep seeing forecasts that they are going to grow and grow, the market just hasn’t responded. Consumers just want their packaging to be simple – and that is to ensure their products work and are protected.” However, Stanfield tells me that if this proves practical and acceptable, edible packaging could be our “packaging nirvana”. He explains: “Creating no waste in the end after all, is the ultimate goal.”

Despite all the work going on to reduce packaging, there is one major barrier that the packaging industry will yet have to face. This comes in the form of the European Commission’s Provision of Food Information to Consumer legislation. Entering into force on 12 December 2011, it will apply from 13 December 2014 and will require all food packaging information to carry a minimum font size of 1.2 millimetres (mm; there is
currently no minimum font size for food information labels), to ‘assist consumers who want to make better-informed food and dietary choices’. However, if the maximum surface of the package is less than 80 centimetres squared (cm2), the minimum size is reduced to 0.9 mm, and if it is less than 25 cm2, nutritional information is not obligatory. Nevertheless, the name of the food, the presence of possible allergens, net quantity and the minimum shelf life must always be displayed, irrespective of the size of the package. This could see some food packaging, which has made several advances in sizereduction, increase in size to accommodate the new-sized text.

Speaking at the Food Safety, Health Claims and Regulation in Europe conference in Brussels in 2011, Lorraine Eve, Head of Regulatory Affairs at Ashbury Labelling, said that the new law will have “a huge bearing on those within the food and drink industry who not only need to adapt their methods to comply with the new requirements, but will have to fundamentally change the way they design their labels”.

Indeed, Phil Dalton, Head of Regulatory at Legal Impackt, advisors to the consumer goods sector, added: “Some industry experts have bemoaned the lack of innovation and simplification, suggesting that the new regulation is no more than tinkering and the net effect on industry, a requirement that virtually every food label across Europe needs to change, is disproportionate to the benefit for consumers. It certainly doesn’t reflect the amount of time the EU put into debating the subject, a process that began in 1994!”

But several members of the packaging industry have said that there are some solutions available to take advantage of packaging space. Gillian Garside-Wight, Packaging Technology Director at Your Packaging Partner, said: “[Packaging reduction] could work against the requirements of the [new law] as they require an increase in mandatory information and an increase in the minimum font size. Regulatory requirements must be met, but thankfully there are packaging solutions available in the marketplace today that can help…there is a provision in the regulations that states that technological means of displaying information may be valid in the future. Potential solutions include leaflet labels, reverse print, QR codes, talking packaging (currently on shelf in Germany), intelligent till receipts, and augmented reality.”

Let’s keep our fingers crossed that decades of innovation moving packaging in the right direction is not undone by one relatively small piece of legislation.