CORDIS

The use of petroleum-based plastic materials in the food packaging area has been steadily 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, human beings produce about 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. 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 biodegradable plastics and resources are seen as one of the many strategies to minimize the environmental impact of petroleum-based plastics. Biodegradable packaging, which has the ability to break down and return to nature, has attracted special attention as it could be the way forward to fight plastic pollution, without compromising the quality of packaging. Having a plastic which can degrade over time naturally, is a preferable option for many businesses and for the environment. For this reason, the YPACK team are working on an innovative food packaging solution based on polyhydroxyalkanoates (PHA) that we might find in supermarkets by the end of the project in 2020.

Briefly, YPACK aims to scale up production and commercially validate two food packaging solutions based on on biodegradable polymers, polyhydroxyalkanoate (PHAs). The new packaging will make use of food industry by-products (cheese whey and almond shells) to assure the biodegradability of the material, all in all reducing food waste. The project itself consists of the following building blocks :
1. Consumer profiling and market study in order to identify consumers´ preferences and market needs.
2. Several processes related to the production of multi-layered systems are being optimised and scaled to semi-industrial level, aming to produce various tons of packaging.
3. Unique performance allowing the preservation of high-demanding foods by the use of high barrier packaging (preserving and extending the shelf life of food)
4. Shelf life studies with fresh pasta, red meat, vegetables, strawberries and other high-demanding foods are done by two retailers and a food company who are partners in the project.
An overview of YPACK project has been illustrated below.






Figure 1. Overall methodology within the YPACK project.

The work carried out during the first 18 months of the project has led to the development of several biodegradablepackaging technologies from a lab to a pre-industrial scale that are currently being scaled up. Up to this point YPACK has achieved:

WP1 allowed to identify market failures and other barriers which needs to overcome from the consumers and the market in order to tackle these issues so both market and consumers can accept YPACK prototypes. This work package has been concluded and overall, all the objectives established for this WP were successfully achieved. It provided a solid body of novel insights about consumers’ attitudes, knowledge, interest, and behaviour towards sustainability, sustainable packaging and more specifically bio-based plastic packaging. The information gathered is the first of its kind. Likewise, subtantial information has been gathered for the safety assessment of the materials used at YPACK.

The whole technical development process has been carried out for WP2. The technologies were conceptualized and patented earlier by CSIC and some other partners. The specific technologies follow:
- A biodegradable thermoformable tray made by cast extrusion based on a polyhydroxyalkanoate biopolymer (PHA) produced by microorganisms using from cheese whey as raw material and blended with and almond shell residues.
- A high barrier multilayer biodegradable thermoformable tray made by cast extrusion and lamination, containing a high oxygen barrier nanocellulose layer.
- Biodegradable tie layers (bioadhesives) with barrier and active antimicrobial and antioxidant capacity made from PHAs derived from fruit residues and cheese whey biowaste.
- A biodegrable pouch made by film blowing.
- A biodegradable multilayer pouch made by film blowing and lamination with gas barrier and antimicrobial and antioxidant capacity.

As well as this, WP6 has already identified the Key Exploitable Results (KER) and has collected information about description of the results, research roadmap and risk analysis of each result. WP5 has been in charge to give support to WP2 and WP3 by providing a convenient characterisation techniques and special tests.
WP3 has already started interactions on technology transfer with WP2 and trials on pre-industrial production and extraction of raw PHBV, as well as processing has been carried out. Lastly, WP7 has fullfilled the communication and dissemination activities up to M18, developing a project logo, brand, a website and an animated video for dissemination. In addition, there is an ongoing presence on social media and a first newsletter has been sent out.

Major advances in the project beyond the state of the art are the development and scaling up of a new cheese whey derived PHA biopolymer and biodegradable thermoformable compounds based on PHA with reduced cost and based on biowaste. It is also a major breakthrough of the project, the development of a high gas barrier multilayer concept that can be thermoformed. The YPACK products make use of safe nanotech strategies such as nanocellulose layers and electrospinning to exhibit the desired functionalities. Currently, there is no biodegradable packaging that can achieve the targeted properties.
We expect to achieve by the end of the project a minimum of 2 tons scale fully functional biodegradable packaging, i.e. thermoformed trays and flow pack pouch films. These concepts will be assessed in terms of LCA, biodegradability and migration and as packaging elements for the shelf-life extension of several selected food products. Several of the developments are expected to be converted into products to be licenced to packaging companies.