Packs and Closures

Even the staunchest supporter of the packaging industry has concerns about the amount of packaging a trip to the supermarket can produce, but the amount of food wasted by households in the UK is even greater.

The Waste and Resources Action Programme (Wrap) estimates that we throw away a third of all the food we buy, and to prevent waste on such a costly scale, to the environment and to consumers’ pockets, it has committed to working with retailers, consumers, local authorities and community groups to reduce consumer food waste by 100,000 tonnes by March 2008.

A campaign to make the public aware of the scale of the food waste problem will kick into action this September. It will need to render some unbelievable facts believable to inspire action (see below: Food waste facts).

One of the reasons we waste so much food is simple: we buy more than we need and often throw away food that is still perfectly edible. With ‘buy one get one free’ offers always seemingly on the increase, Britain is becoming even more of a throwaway society.

According to Wrap’s recent Understanding Food Waste research, consumers do not appear to have made the connection between the food we waste and the environment. “Consumers simply do not recognise that greenhouse gas emissions are generated from the cultivating, transporting, processing and storing of food before purchase and that, if food is thrown away, all this effort and environmental impact goes to waste too,” says Mark Barthel, Wrap’s special adviser. “We are much more sensitive to packaging waste than food waste with almost three-quarters of us agreeing that ‘discarded food packaging is a greater environmental issue than food thrown away.’”

A decade of food deflation means the economic motivation to be careful with food has been eroded. Dick Searle, Packaging Federation chief executive, believes use-by dates may also need to be addressed as modern refrigeration and packaging techniques extend product shelf life longer than consumers are used to.

Packaging consultant Terry Robins agrees: “Sell-by dates, too, are one of the biggest causes of food waste, because they are really only an indicator of when something is ‘past its best’, but people often take it to mean when something should be thrown away. So anything that can help use-by dates to be more accurate would be helpful.”

The environmental impact of food waste is one that Searle thinks packaging producers can help reduce, but that the impetus will have to come from the retailers “because we [the packaging industry] do what we’re told. It’s not for us to specify.”

The industry is already producing packs and technologies that could contribute to ensuring less food is wasted.

These include time-temperature indicators, reclosable pouch and bag formats, oxygen scavenging materials, improvements in modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) and better seal integrity; in essence, any technology that can make partially consumed food remain palatable and therefore more likely to be consumed rather than wasted.

A pertinent example of how just a little bit of packaging can make all the difference to reducing food waste is the simple cucumber.

Following a comment about the need to reduce packaging waste, a supplier to a major retailer asked if the Cucumber Growers’ Association could justify the use of shrinkwrap on cucumbers. An in-depth investigation revealed that a film wrap can extend the life of the fruit to 10 days, compared to the three days it would take to shrivel and bend if it was unwrapped.

Barthel says that retailers and brand owners need to be a lot more intelligent on the portioning of their food products. “They need to think more about how consumers end up using their products rather than just concentrating on how to deliver it to them in the store,” he says. “Using two 250g twin packs instead of one 500g pack could help reduce food waste.”

Getting all of the contents out of a pack can also sometimes be difficult, he says, so he advises designers to consider using wider mouths or better squeeze systems when developing new packs.

A recent example of portioned packs is Philadelphia Mini Tubs from Kraft Europe. Mini Tubs were developed after consumer research found that consumers of soft white cheese were not finishing their full tubs of Philadelphia after purchase. Mini Tubs suit smaller households better and they keep the lesser amount of product contained in each section fresher for longer. Kraft says Mini Tubs provide the consumer with portion control, convenience and portability, so environmental benefits need not impinge on modern daily life.

Retailers are taking the idea up directly. Waitrose, for example, is packing some of its thinly sliced ham in smaller multi-pack pods to enable consumers to open only what they need. Marks and Spencer and Sainsbury’s pack individual portions of vegetables and bread manufacturers are beginning to take advantage of the EU scrapping pack size limitations.

Portioned packs have proved popular with the Food Standards Agency (FSA) for their health benefits as well. Its recent Saturated Fat and Energy Intake consultation lauded the benefits of smaller portions to improving consumer awareness and understanding of healthy eating. The FSA was keen to see more smaller packs of food available to tackle the rising levels of obesity in the UK. Smaller packs are already used abroad. In the US, for instance, Sara Lee has launched a new range of smaller frozen pie desserts called Simple Sweets, which are said to be suitable for small households and “mean less waste or overeating.”

The UK perspective
Dr Paul Butler from Smart Packaging contrasts the take-up of smarter food packaging in the UK to that in countries like the US. He says there, and in countries such as France, consumers are already used to buying food packed in portions or with time-temperature indicators. They better understand why food is packed the way it is and make use of resealable features to their advantage.

In the UK, there is a risk, warns Barthel, that using packaging technology to reduce food waste, without educating the consumer about how it works, could backfire. Using too much packaging in delivering more meaningful portions, he says, has been shown to be a complete turn-off to consumers because they perceive packaging to be bad. Getting the balance right will be key.

Convincing consumers that packaging is the answer to food waste is going to be a tough job, as the May issue of WI Life, the national magazine of the Women’s Institute, demonstrates. In that issue, the WI called on its members to help the public reduce food waste as part of its Care of our Environment Campaign. The article appeared as WI public affairs committee member Jean Sheppard spoke at Total about the WI’s well-publicised campaign to reduce ‘excess’ packaging. Sheppard said packaging would remain at the top of the WI’s agenda, but as the competing concerns about the harmful impact of food waste develop, let’s hope the WI is as quick off the mark to formulate an awareness raising campaign about food waste.

The packaging industry already has the technologies to help reduce some of the environmental damage of food waste, now it just has to make sure the public know about it.

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FOOD WASTE FACTS
• We throw away one-third of all the food we buy and at least half of this food could have been eaten
• One-fifth of domestic waste is food
• A typical household throws away between £4.80 and £7.70 worth of food that could have been eaten every week. That’s the equivalent of £250-£400 a year, or £15,000–£24,000 in a lifetime
• Avoidable food waste has eight times the environmental impact of packaging waste, which accounts for 3% of landfill
• If we stopped throwing food away, the carbon emissions savings we could make would equate to taking one in five cars off the road

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EUROMONITOR: PORTABLE PACKAGING OUT AND ABOUT
People have been complaining about their lack of time for decades and there is little sign of time pressures reducing. Our expectations are constantly rising and we want things to happen immediately: clicking away from websites if they do not download within seconds, hanging up if left on a voicemail system, and buying Blackberries to ensure we are never out of touch. Food consumption has also been influenced by this trend, resulting in the rise of the on-the-go consumer, and requisite demand for packaging that facilitates eating on the move.

Portability in food packaging has taken several forms, including smaller portions as evident in individually wrapped foods, such as biscuits and cakes, to packaging innovations such as Heinz Microwaveable Soup in thermoformed plastic cups. Lunch kits, typically the domain of the children’s market, have also shifted to the adult segment, with products like Golden Vale Brunchetta range of cheese dips and Cathedral City’s iconic British brand kit consisting of Cathedral City cheese, Jacob’s cream crackers and Branston pickle.
Health trends are also influencing the on-the-go food category, notably in the fruit segment. Euromonitor International estimates fresh cut fruit was worth around £136 million in 2006, up 19% on 2005. Even non-traditional food companies are getting fruity, with pastry and pie brand Ginsters branching into the fresh cut fruit category with its Fruit Snack Pack. The selection of fresh grapes, melon and pineapple slices is available from garage forecourts, illustrating that consumers now want even basic foods cut and cleaned for them to save time.

The ultimate in portable packaging could be said to be the single-shot bio-drinking yoghurts and fruit juices. Unilever’s Knorr Vie, for example, claims that it fulfils half the recommended daily fruit and vegetable requirements, reducing the need for anyone to carry both a carrot and a banana in their handbag.

Peta Conn, global packaging manager, Euromonitor International