The use of petroleum-based plastic materials in the food packaging area has been increasing over the last decades due to a number of advantages such as their low cost, versatility, mechanical properties, easy processing, etc. However, their abusive use has caused serious issues to the environment. Such is the issue that, up to day, we produce around 300 million tons of plastic waste every year, which is nearly the equivalent to the weight of the entire human population. The problem is that plastic waste — whether in an ocean, or on land — can persist in the environment for centuries and create microplastics as they break down. This is currently causing serious environmental and health problems and for this reason, there has been a growing interest worldwide to replace plastics with biodegradable plastics, with particular attention to replace this on the area of food packaging.
The use of compostable and biodegradable -under environmental conditions- biomaterials and resources are seen as one of the many strategies to minimize the environmental impact of petroleum-based plastics. These materials are compatible with the Circular Bioeconomy strategy, where waste is upcycled into packaging, which is then returning the carbon back to soil via organic recycling. Biodegradable performing packaging derived from contaminant industrial wastes such as cheese whey, has attracted special attention as it could be the definitive solution to fight plastic pollution, without compromising food quality and safety aspects inherent to plastic packaging. For this reason, the YPACK team has been working on innovative food packaging solutions based on polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) derived from wastes, that have reached commercial explotation for some of the developed items even during the execution of the project.
Briefly, YPACK has aimed to scale the production and commercial validation of two food packaging solutions based on biodegradable biowaste-derived polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHAs). The actions carried out within the project were:
1. Consumer profiling and market studies in order to identify consumers preferences and market needs.
2. Several processes related to the production of mono and multi-layered systems were optimised and scaled to a pre-industrial scale.
3. High barrier and active performance allowing the preservation of challenging foods.
4. Life cycle analysis (LCA) and shelf-life studies with meat, fruits, vegetables and pasta. The latter activities being currently carried out by two retailers and a food company, partners of the project.
Figure 1.Sketch of YPACK project.
