Tackling the food waste crisis
There are many possible approaches to dealing with the global food waste problem, from innovative packaging to nanotechnology and smarter transit solutions, as Victoria Hattersley reports.
AS
the world’s population expands and environmental pressures increase, the vast extent of the global food waste crisis is being thrown into the spotlight. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations says that roughly one-third of the food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted each year. And according to WRAP, the UK’s Waste and Resources Action Programme, each year the world sees $984 billion in economic losses per year due to food waste. But how is such a vast problem to be tackled? Of course there is no simple – or single – solution: technologies are being developed in a number of fields to help reduce the amount of food we waste and ease the environmental burden at the same time.
Improving sanitisation technologies Take Swiss startup Ebeam Technologies, which uses electron beams to sanitise crops and other dry foods. The company is currently in a partnership with Swiss food giant Bühler to test the technology, with the first installation taking place at German food manufacturer Kündig’s production facilities. One of the significant aspects of this technology is that it is able to sanitise the foodstuff, prolonging its shelf life without damaging its essential qualities – i.e. its taste and nutritional value. For example, in 10 Industry Europe
early tests on coriander ebeam was able to provide sanitisation while only slightly reducing the essential oils (amounting to roughly a third of the oil that would be lost through steam treatment).
Smarter transit solutions Reducing damage to food during transport is another major challenge, which a team from the Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (Empa) in Switzerland is working to address. They have developed sensors to monitor the condition of fruit as it travels from farm to shop. These sensors are the exact size and composition of the fruit, in order to model its experience in the pallet as closely as possible. They provide continuous feedback on the container’s temperature, as even the slightest variation can affect the shelf life of the fruit. This solution could help prevent food waste as well as creating more leeway on the use-by date on the produce.
Packaging innovation Smarter packaging development to deal with the food waste crisis can take many forms. Some researchers are looking at improving barrier properties, for example, while others are developing intelligent packs that can interact with the environment and monitor the rate of deterioration.
However, while high barrier packaging materials are desirable in terms of food protection as they offer strong resistance to water, oxygen and pathogens, they are often produced from non-renewable resources so there is something of a tension between the need to lower the environmental impact of a package while also protecting the food. It’s a difficult balance, but one that researchers are constantly working to achieve. For example, last year, UK-based Aquapak Polymers Ltd launched HydroPol, a range of flexible polymers based on polyvinyl alcohol, which is oil-based while also being biodegradable and fully recyclable. According to Dr John Williams, business development director at the company: “Unusually for a plastic, HydroPol is hydrophilic, so food is also less likely to perish from sweating. Many plastics are used only once, and for a short time, before they become waste. Aquapak’s Hydropol significantly reduces the environmental impact of flexible plastic packaging, without requiring a change in consumer behaviour.”
Nanotechnology Whether it’s in the area of nanocoatings on packaging or in the structure of the food itself, there is significant promise in the use of nanotechology (science, engineering and technology conducted at the nanoscale) to design
