SUSTAINABILITY AND THE ENVIRONMENT: FOOD PACKAGING
The buck stops on a shop shelf near you
Is food packaging ruining our environment
or harbouring the means
to help save it?
Food packaging and food
waste are uncomfortable
travelling companions in
an era in which people
are awakening to sustainability issues,
particularly those issues that many
feel should be within personal control.
This makes food packaging a
popular target of complaint for littering
landscapes, clogging up landfill and injuring
wildlife. Its partner in crime is food waste,
with estimates that up to 40 per cent of
food produced by today’s industrialised highimpact
agriculture goes uneaten.
Both of these issues have been on the
receiving end of campaigns for change,
including outright bans of some types of
packaging, but research is showing that
packaging may hold the answer to both
problems.
Paul Trott, Professor of Innovation
Management and Head of the Strategy,
Enterprise and Innovation Subject Group,
says the key is to use the right packaging in
the right ways, even though research shows
it is not that simple.
Professor Trott and members of his
team – including Dr Chris Simms, his
former PhD student and now a Reader in
Innovation Management and New Product
Development – use their knowledge,
discoveries and insights to help companies
innovate more effectively.
This work has allowed them to put food
packaging into a different perspective.
“There are many examples where a
company has been able to reduce its food
waste by developing new packaging,”
Professor Trott says.
“One project concerned soft fruits, such
as strawberries and raspberries. They have
a short shelf life, and as they mature they
produce gases. It’s better to release many
of those gases, but not all. Oxygen is best
retained. The solution is a plastic film, which
has a certain number of microscopic holes
of a certain size to release spoilage gases but
retain oxygen.
A soft fruit company, in collaboration
with Marks & Spencer, has now developed a
technique for setting the correct
number of holes in the film for a
specific fruit, potentially doubling
the shelf life and greatly reducing
spoilage and waste.
Similar ‘smart’ packaging can
also aid health and hygiene: “For
example, very often you now buy
a chicken which you cook in its
packaging, reducing the risk of
bacterial contamination through
handling.”
The roadblock
Professor Trott and his team have
undertaken allied research investigating the
power relationships in the supply chain. In
the food industry, the supply chain primarily
comprises the retailer, supplier and foodprocessing
factory.
Recent research looked at whether
retailers encourage or block the development
of new products, particularly those that could
enhance recycling and reduce waste. The
evidence was unambiguous: supermarkets
just won’t accept product or packaging
innovation if there is a cost.
“Suppliers will say, we’ve got lots of new
products, we want to do this, we can do
that. Retailers will tend to say, no because
it will increase the price. Or they’ll say, yes,
but we don’t want an increase in price,”
Professor Trott says.
“Retailers have the power. Ultimately,
introducing or not introducing new products
becomes their decision because they hold
the dominant marketplace position.”
Professor Trott and his team gather
There are many
examples where
a company
has been able
to reduce its
food waste by
developing new
packaging.
– Paul Trott
PHOTO: 123RF
data by speaking directly to
companies, large and small,
which supply food retailers.
“The research is
raising issues for industry
consideration.
Are the retailers too powerful?
Should action be taken?”
Professor Trott says a study
investigated how the food
industry develops new products;
knowledge that has direct
relevance to developing more
environmentally sustainable
packaging.
“It found the amount spent
on research, innovation and
development in food is tiny –
just one per cent of all revenue. Compare
this to the automotive industry, which
spends approximately six per cent, or the
software industry, which spends nine per
cent, both of which employ large numbers
of scientists and engineers.
“By comparison, the food industry is
all about processing and manufacturing,
playing around perhaps with machinery or
tweaking a recipe, and very much trial and
error and adaptation.”
Professor Trott puts this down to the
near total emphasis on cost and, again, this
leads back to the supermarkets.
The conundrum for companies
and the national economy is that food
manufacturing is the biggest manufacturing
sector in the UK. “You wouldn’t have
to increase spending on research and
development very much to have a dramatic
impact … plus there is overwhelming
evidence that firms that invest in R&D
and innovation tend to outperform their
competitors,” Professor Trott says.
“It should be food for thought.”
ISSUE 1 / 2020
21