Preserving food
Modern ways of packaging food benefit everybody - whether you are a stressed workaholic, a busy parent or a gourmet. And modern food packaging often means petrochemical-derived materials such as plastics.
Pre-packed food makes our shopping quicker and our cooking safer. Packaging can be tailor-made to suit the particular product and make it easier to transport and to preserve. And the careful analysis conducted by the manufacturers makes the consumer sure that what they are eating is safe and healthy.
Petrochemical-based food packaging has many virtues: performance, low cost, light weight, thermal insulation, shock-resistance, hygiene. We all take that for granted. But it also helps reduce global hunger. In the developed world, the volume of food wasted before it reaches consumers is only 2%. But this figure rises dramatically - up to 50% - in emerging nations where packaging, refrigeration and distribution systems are limited. One recent report estimates that in the former Soviet Union about one quarter of all food production was wasted because of poor or non-existent packaging. As plastics packaging becomes more widely introduced in developing countries, it will help preserve meagre food supplies, minimise waste through spoilage, and protect against the dangers caused by food-borne disease.
It also makes sense for the environment: a lorry can carry much more product and much less packaging when plastics are used. Numerous studies have shown that, thanks to the change from glass to plastics, lorries can indeed carry much more product, which means fewer delivery trips, entailing a drastic decrease in fuel consumption and a similarly dramatic reduction of the resulting pollution.
For more information, see Plastics packaging.
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