The Future is All Here
The Zero Waste Packaging
You need to pay $10 for trash removal in your colony. Why paying for literal garbage when you cannot create trash in the first place
How many of you have found and sniffed the bulky hills of all those wrappers, cups, plastic bottles and trash on the side of road while walking or have you heard of all those stories of marine life dying every year by ingesting plastic. Trust me, our planet is not happy with this burden of trash. This is the reason the idea of reusing, recycling and composting intrigues me.
The concept of “Zero Waste” is not new, we have been using it for few decades ago. I still remember my grandma returning the old notebooks, plastic and glass bottles of fizzy drinks to the shopkeeper to be sanitized and re-used.
Is this really possible to buy food without creating waste?
Of course, it is
What to Do Today?
There are multiple ways by which each of us can contribute in making the healthy environment from today. After all who will wait for the Future Huh!
Use Eco-Friendly Alternatives to Plastic
The use of minimal packaging and reusable materials like glass, wood and paper has been replaced by plastic packaging these days.
- The level Ground Trading is using coffee packaging made from the pulp of wood which is also completely biodegradable.
- Popcorn packaging by Yellotree Farms is also made from compostable materials.
- The idea is taken bit further by Postmodern making composting bins compostable which gets degraded automatically along with the waste inside.
Packaging That Transforms the Waste
The aim of making packaging transforming waste is to make it reusable in some other form. The packing can be used for planting small plants. Many innovative and creative ideas are used in this aspect to make trash cans, piggy banks, planters, and many more.
Your Own Packaging
The new trend is motivating shoppers to bring their own packaging with themselves in the marketplaces such as BYO. There are many places in UK which promote their customers to bring along their own bars and jars.
There is another brand called Unpackaged that allows the store to come up with their own packaging to buy products they desire including dried fruits, nuts, chocolate, pulses, grain, cereals and household cleaners and so more. The same kind of marketplaces have also set up in Canada.
I recently watched an amazing video on Facebook where the peels of oranges were dried, grinded into powder and were recycled to make 3D bioprint cups https://fb.watch/5kP8rVaSgm/ for serving juice. Also, when searching for edible food packaging on PubMed I found some astonishing results, the maximum research on this niche has been found in a period of 2019–2021. Here I am going to share some interesting steps which have been opted by our science to make edible food packaging.
The Tomorrow Machine
In 2013, a Swedish design studio called Tomorrow Machine was founded by Anna Glansen and Hanna Billquist. This focused on building a better world and to use new technologies and materials. The concept of edible food packaging is getting more attention today, proving that the consumption with zero waste in not so far now.
The tomorrow machine is working with Research Company and many materials manufacturers to accompany a new era of food packaging. This project is inspired by the concept of BIOMIMICRY: fruit and its peel, egg and its shell- the nature’s way of packaging is simply ideal. A biodegradable beeswax is used to make a rice package and the oil package is made by using caramelized sugar with a wax covering. It is hopeful that these products will be available in the future for consumption.
This edible packaging increases the shelf life of food up to year. Tomorrow machine claims it to be vegan and free of any sort of flavors and colors. These packaging of gel, paper and glass-like structures will modernize the experience of food along with its viscosity and contents based beverages.
What kind of material should be used for food packaging?
Glancen said:
“We don’t choose the materials, the material chooses us.”
This will certainly evolve the edible packaging of food which is the zero-waste packaging leaving behind no trace.
Edible Bio-Based Films For Powdered Food
Food packaging is very fundamental in today’s society but is ignored by the consumers as useless. This problem has now been solved by the introduction of Biopolymer-based edible packaging. The edible material for food packaging was made by:
- Agar
- Sodium Alginate
- Glycerol
This packaging of edible material was also tested for 3 months and the insulin based films not only serve as a good packaging but also improve the physical properties such as, light sweet taste, high solubility capacity, good optical properties, homogeneity and well-defined margins along with the increased mechanical properties (the materials with insulin films have more tensile strength and elevated elongation values) this packaging forecasts the biodegradable, edible and compostable packaging which is of low cost, obtained from renewable resources and leaves behind no trash.
Biopolymers can also be defined under the class of active substances because these have the ability to contain many active substances. On the bases of biopolymers the silver nanoparticles are also used in food packaging materials. The use of Silver nanoparticles seems interesting and play a major role in maintaining the shelf life, quality and physic-mechanical properties of the food because of its Antimicrobial.
Using Bacterial Cellulose in Bio-Packing Industry
The maintenance of the shelf life, quality and safety of the food with its protection from various environmental factors is the prime duty of food industry. We know that the conventional used plastic packaging for food is not recyclable and has a large number of environmental impacts.
In the recent studies a very good alternative to plastic packaging has been found. This is the use of bacterial nanocellulose (BNC) which is biodegradable, ecologically safe and chemically pure biomolecule. This is considered as the biologically active and intelligent packing of food with some new innovative approaches and overcomes the problems of lack of antioxidants and antimicrobial ability and the relative poor mechanical properties. Thus the quality and safety of food is fully maintained.
However, the complete implementation of these kinds of bio-packing depends entirely upon the cost-effectiveness and utter performance of the industry and the consumers.
The Plastic recycling and replacing it with other alternative materials is still has a long way to go but the need of time is to take an initiative at least.
