How food packaging is good for the environment

By M.S.L.J.

SUPERMARKETS encourage shoppers to buy products through clever layouts and cunning promotions. Packaging presents items in an alluring way. It also keeps them clean and safe to eat. Green types balk at plastic-encased bananas. But some forms of packaging, especially for meat, can be an environmental boon. A third of food never makes it to the plate according to the UN, costing billions of dollars every year. Taken together, greenhouse-gas emissions from food waste are higher than those of India, Brazil or Saudi Arabia, because chucking out items means the water, fuel, fertilizer and other inputs that went into them are wasted too. Such harm to the planet can be reduced if the length of time that food lingers on shelves or in fridges can be extended. Packaging is a part of that strategy. How?

Meat provides 17% of global calorific intake but it is costly in terms of both cash and resources, requiring a disproportionate amount of water and feed. And more land is given over to grazing animals than for any other single purpose. Overall the livestock sector accounts for as much pollution as is spewed out by all the world’s vehicles. Ruminant livestock, such as cattle and sheep, have stomachs containing bacteria able to digest tough, cellulose-rich plants. But along the way, huge volumes of methane are belched too—a greenhouse gas more than twenty times as powerful as carbon dioxide over the span of a century.

Wrapping meat in vacuum packaging prevents oxidation, extending its lifespan. It allows the red stuff to stay on shelves for between five and eight days, rather than two to four when simply wrapped on a polystyrene tray or draped behind a counter. This pleases big grocery chains, which stand to save thousands of dollars a week if less meat has to be either marked down or thrown out. It also delights aspiring chefs, as vacuum-packed meat is more tender.

An environmental tradeoff exists, however. Packaging itself requires resources to produce. But the emissions from creating it are less than those associated with food waste. According to estimates, for every tonne of packaging, the equivalent of between one and two tonnes of carbon dioxide is released. For every tonne of food wasted, the equivalent of over three tonnes of carbon dioxide is emitted. So while supermarkets used to focus on curbing the amount of packaging they use, many now consider extending shelf life the most important environmental consideration. Given that meat consumption will grow by 75% by the middle of the century, vacuum packaging offers an important way to boost resource efficiency and access to an important protein source.