An oft-cited industry rule of thumb is that packaging represents only 10% of the energy required to make and deliver food to the consumer. Plastics are strong, durable, lightweight, and save in both cost and material resources over the alternatives. Environmental advocates acknowledge the benefits that multilayer packages bring. The steaks that consumers buy in the supermarket are usually packaged by the store’s own meat department in polystyrene foam trays and a film such as polyvinyl chloride. Flexible plastics don’t shatter or dent, and if they are well-engineered, they don’t rip or puncture either. 1. “Without significant action, there may be more plastic than fish in the ocean, by weight, by 2050,” the report says. “It really raises questions in my mind whether we are looking at overpackaging in some cases,” he says. Even tuna is starting to come in easy-to-open metallized pouches instead of the familiar stout can. It involves applying a micrometer-thick silicon oxide layer to a polyolefin film. Of course, unlike the consumer products outlined above, the packaging for industrial products probably does not help sell the product. Dow’s Wooster sees that in the supermarket. The cost of plastic packaging The growing use of plastic food packaging benefits consumers, but critics say industry isn’t doing enough to minimize the negative environmental impact By Alexander H. Tullo The changes have happened so gradually that most consumers haven’t even noticed, but a tremendous amount of plastics have crept onto supermarket shelves. Shoppers may wonder what the heck plastic is doing on cucumbers, which did fine on their own for many years. The cost of plastic packaging is high, but the cost of not using it may be higher. To explain what flexible packaging brings to the food industry, experts often point to two examples: cucumbers and meat. In food packaging, for example, 4.6 times the amount of alternative materials is required to do the same job as plastics. It suggests a “search for a ‘superpolymer’ with the functionality of today’s polymers and with superior recyclability.”. The cost of plastic packaging is high, but the cost of not using it may be higher. Plastic can be as strong as steel. According to ExxonMobil’s Shulman, one classic failure that occurs in plastic packages, such as large sacks for rice, are pinholes that come from the stress of shipping. And they make it all too easy for people to simply discard things without a thought to the damage they are doing to the planet. “If you talk to someone whose expertise is designing corrugated containers, they might not understand why we use more than one plastic to make a package.”. I do.) It’s durable. The report found the environmental cost of using all plastics to be $75 billion annually. The cost of plastic packaging is high, but the cost of not using it may be higher. Typically, packaging is not seen as an advantage or selling point, but more as an expense. Combining toughness, flexibility, barrier properties, and other attributes into a single polymer is probably a long way off, but the industry is trying to simplify packages to facilitate recycling. That’s not good business.”. Most of them, he says, justify the use of plastics. Only 28% of the plastic, the report says, was collected for further use. Plastic packaging is taking over the supermarket, enveloping almost every food product we buy. Many high-profile investors made the pilgrimage to a swampy, downtrodden suburb of Miami, where they became convinced Abovitz was building a kind of Apple Inc. for computers strapped to people’s faces. If the meat is processed centrally and vacuum-packed in a multilayer film that includes an EVOH barrier, it can last for nearly a month. Industry and its critics may disagree on a lot, but no one can argue with charging good money for a plastic that will only be used in small amounts. The emphasis is on a circular economy, in which the industry cultivates a supply chain for used materials so they will be reused—ideally in their original, high-value applications. Nine percent of the amount you spend on any product is probably the cost of its packaging.” High end, indeed. David Clark, vice president of safety, environment, and sustainability at Amcor, says such instances are rare. “Our customers aim at delivering the most value to consumers,” he says. Indeed, the food waste issue is connected to some staggering statistics of its own. Flexible plastic packaging allows more food to get from the farm to the table.