Sustainable Food Packaging: Going Plastic Free

Marine plastic pollution has become one of the world’s most pressing environmental problems. A number of food and beverage manufacturers are tackling the problem head on, by developing plastic-free alternatives to their packaging.

Consumer exhaustion with excess packaging has lead to plastic-free aisles in supermarkets and packaging-free stores.  Dutch supermarket chain Ekoplaza opened the world’s first plastic-free aisle in their Amsterdam store in 2018. This sent ripples through the food packaging industry, with environmental campaign groups calling for more supermarkets to take the same approach. Sian Sutherland, co-founder of ‘A Plastic Planet’, argues: “for decades shoppers have been sold the lie that we can't live without plastic in food and drink. A plastic-free aisle dispels all that". 

In March, German supermarket chain Aldi announced that they were trialling plastic-free packaging in a number of Scottish stores. Their aim is to be completely sustainable by 2025. This should mean no more plastic and all packaging will be recyclable, reusable or compostable. Aldi U.S. CEO Jason Hart explains: "ALDI has never offered single-use plastic shopping bags. And while we’re pleased that we’ve helped keep billions of plastic grocery bags out of landfills and oceans, we want to continue to do more. The commitments we’re making to reduce plastic packaging waste are an investment in our collective future that we are proud to make. In 2018, ALDI recycled more than 250,000 tons of materials, including paper, cardboard, plastic and metal. Through this recycling effort, ALDI avoided the greenhouse gas equivalent of 8,094,533 gallons of gasoline."

As recently as July 2019 Nestle UK unveiled plastic-free packaging for their snack bars.  Their “YES!” bars are now covered in coated paper, which is classed as widely recyclable in the UK and mainland Europe. “YES! represents exactly what more and more people are demanding from manufacturers like Nestle now and for the future,” Nestle UK and Ireland’s chief executive Stefano Agostini said. “Making the packaging is sustainable and easy to recycle is an important step as we work to make all of our packaging recyclable or reusable by 2025”.

Nestle’s revolutionary plastic-free snack bars. Pic: NESTLE.

In addition, Nestle is a member of the World Animal Protection’s Global Ghost Gear Initiative (GGGI), which is a collective of businesses and non-profits who have joined forces to collaboratively tackle the 640,000 tonnes of fishing gear abandoned in the world's oceans each year, the majority of which is made from plastic.

Another innovative plastic-free approach can be found in the work of design students at the Pratt Institute, in Brooklyn, New York. In a bid to progress from the unsustainable designs of single-use plastic cups, straws and bottles, the students have created 3D printed alternatives made of sugar and agar—a gelatinous substance derived from seaweed. Other ephemeral alternatives to plastic containers include hand-shaped bowls made from mycelium, which is the threadlike roots of mushrooms.

Innovative plastic-free developments are also occurring in restaurants. Skye Gyngell, a chef at Spring restaurant in London, has cut out all single-use plastics. And the restaurant’s pre-theatre makes use of misshapen fruit and vegetables and leftovers, that would otherwise be discarded. “I watched the documentary ‘A Plastic Ocean’ on Netflix” says Skye, “and slightly catastrophised the whole thing. I remember going to a supermarket after I’d seen it and walking around the aisles like a mad person going, ‘That’s plastic, that’s plastic …”. Having previously used 260 rolls of Saran wrap per year, the restaurant instead invested in lids. The cost of buying all the necessary lids came to around £1,000; by comparison, the kitchen’s Saran wrap outlay in 2017 was £1,037. So it was undoubtedly an economic win too.

But of course a plastic-free food and beverage industry is not without its challenges. Those in the industry are aware that there’s a fine balancing act between meeting environmental responsibilities, dealing with suppliers, and managing the expectations of your consumers. What’s clear is that there’s undoubtedly a wider consumer appetite to reduce the footprint and environmental impact of food consumption. To remain competitive in the future, food and beverage manufacturers should look to replace plastic in their packaging as the push towards sustainability continues.

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