Driving Innovation in Sustainable Food Packaging

Rigid and flexible food packaging is critical to minimizing food waste, ensuring stable global food distribution and access and for ensuring food safety. Yet unless clear, effective and locally available recycling/reuse processes are available, despite the importance of polymer packaging, it can add significant environmental burden, especially to end of life challenges. Currently, most disposable food packaging materials, regardless of raw material base, are not circular, i.e reusable, recyclable, or degradable. Thus, there is a desire to provide products that meet the increased consumer, market and regulatory need for food packaging that address recycle/reuse, market and cost perspectives.

This three-part session brings together thought leaders in food packaging market need, technical solutions and regulatory requirements to identify requirements and approaches to food packaging that have significant environmental and toxicological advantages compared to existing products. In part one, we will hear about market requirements and challenges for food packaging from the use, scale, global capacity perspectives from industry. In part two, companies, academic and government labs will present potential solutions that aim to provide viable opportunities for circularity and market requirements for food safety while addressing potential climate impact and reducing waste. Finally, in part three, we shall gain insights on the key regulatory criteria for innovations to meet evolving standards for “food safe” and “food grade”, while also meeting functionality demands.

Student presenters whose abstracts are accepted in this session will automatically be considered for a Presidential Giordan Scholar Award towards conference registration and travel.

Organizers

Dr. Judy Giordan, ACS President (2023)
Dr. Adealina Voutchkova, American Chemical Society
Dr. Joel Tickner, Green Chemistry & Commerce Council