Reducing Packaging Waste in Powdered Foods

Introduction

There’s no doubt that modern, sustainable food packaging provides a way to make food safe to consume as well as reducing environmental impacts. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case as the large majority of packaging is designed to be used once and is not recyclable, meaning packaging is discarded and ends up causing harmful pollution throughout the world. This is made even more complex as a large proportion of food packaging must provide various technical elements, including oxygen and moisture barriers to help prevent food spoilage and this is easier to achieve by using multiple types of packaging materials, such as plastic and aluminum foil or paper and plastic. This type of packaging is referred to as multi-material packaging constructions and this is difficult or impossible to recycle via the current recycling infrastructure. This is where mono-material packaging constructions come in – they are suitable solutions to help reduce packaging waste, particularly for powdered foods such as milk powder, hot chocolate, coffee, and protein supplements.

Packaging Materials for Powdered Foods

Let’s take look at how certain packaging materials and their characteristics can help to reduce packaging waste for powdered foods.

Resealable Packaging

Providing consumers with resealable packaging helps to further increase shelf life once a product is opened. Including an airtight seal will help your product maintain freshness, preventing products from going stale and providing confidence to consumers that they can consume food for longer. By providing customers with resealable packaging you can also help to promote behavioural changes in households, by reducing waste and encouraging packaging reuse & refill.

Switching to mono-material packaging

If you are currently relying on single-use plastic packaging or multi-material packaging it is recommended you look to replace this with a mono-material solution. By choosing a single environmentally friendly mono material will allow for selective sorting and optimal recycling. Once the material has been recycled, it can be used again, and this can be repeated over time. Choosing mono-material packaging will also present you with various benefits including:

• Reduced costs as the production process
• Easier to recycle
• Attract sales from environmentally aware consumers
• Enhance your brands CSR and reduce environmental impacts
• Protects the quality and maintains product integrity
• Suitable for multi-sided printing

Due to the above benefits, research has highlighted that two out of three food manufacturing companies are looking to replace previous materials with recyclable alternatives. In fact, data also suggests consumer demand for mono material packaging will grow by 3.9% every year between now and 2025, encouraging brands to make the switch.

Brands that have switched to more sustainable packaging alternatives

With consumers becoming more environmentally cautious these consumers are increasingly demanding proteins and powdered foods which offer eco-friendly packaging alternatives, this goes hand in hand with the rise in vegan and sustainable protein powders on the market. For example:

• The supplement brand Bulk recently changed its packaging to a compostable alternative
• Form Nutrition is selling their protein in 100% plastic-free packaging

Contact Us

If you are looking for alternative packaging materials for your supplement or powdered food brand then speak to our team about ecoPack, the alternative to avoidable plastic packaging. This will allow you to benefit from incredible oxygen and moisture vapour transmission rates by using a mono-material paper packaging solution that can be recycled. If you would like to discuss this in more detail, please call our team on 01505 707700 or email us.