The singular most common sight in a grocery store isn’t the food. Surprisingly, it’s the plastic packaging that wraps the food and the other non-dietary items many supermarket chains sell.
Since the 1980s, plastic food packaging has taken over the market. Not only is it used to seal meat and hold potato chips, the use of plastic has delivered the onslaught of single-use products packaged for quick lunches or dinners.
In general, food packaging trends are developed by the needs of consumers. As people became more reliant on quick, prepackaged foods, consumers needed food packaging that maintained the quality of the food while allowing for longer term storage in their homes. Later, it became necessary to package food for single-use servings as more workers wanted the convenience of quick options for lunches.
Then, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the need for single-use food packaging became a necessity as take-out from restaurants become the dominant way many people got their food from restaurants.
But even as the demand for convenient packaging has increased, so has the desire by most consumers to find ways to protect the planet from trash and other pollutants like plastic. Just one plastic bottle can take 450 years to decompose, for example, making sustainable packaging an issue that 64% of consumers say is important to them.
The need for eco-friendly packaging is inspiring change in the food packaging industry, but most ideas center merely on biodegradable or recyclable materials. While these products certainly help in reducing the amount of garbage found on beaches, roads and landfills, a holistic approach to manufacturing these products provides complete sustainability.
At Genera, the future of sustainable food packaging from farm to factory to consumer is already here.
We partner with East Tennessee farmers to provide feedstock or switchgrass to our Vonore, Tenn. factory where it is manufactured into biodegradable food packaging known as Earthable® fiber. Earthable® market pulp is high-quality, short fiber that is ideal for food packaging.
Partnering with local farmers reduces the need for costly long-distance transportation of materials to our Fiber Products Mill, where the switchgrass is milled into usable fiber that is molded and formed into biodegradable one-use products such as plates, bowls and clamshell containers.
While consumer preference is definitely driving the need for sustainable packaging, the pandemic and other factors, such as worker shortages and increased oil costs, are also creating the need for a better supply chain.
The need for environmentally friendly packaging is not a coming trend – it’s happening now both in the United States and across the globe. Genera is proud to be at the forefront of the holistic packaging approach.
