Packaging, blessing in disguise. Review on its diverse contribution to food sustainability

Background Packaging has been blamed for representing one of the highest environmental impacts in food productions. Although it cannot be denied that packages, with special regards for materials production, processing and disposal, carry some impact, other aspects should be considered for an objective assessment of packaging environmental role. Scope and approach The paper, through a survey of specific literature, aims to estimate the actual relative impact of packaging with respect to the overall food products environmental load, to present an overview on the ongoing efforts spent for making packaging more sustainable and the packaging-product system more efficient and to highlight the novel positive consideration that food packaging should receive. Special focus has been addressed to the recent contributions which have correlated food waste reduction, achieved through packaging innovations, with an overall environmental improvement. Key findings and conclusions Considerations based on the packaging relative environmental impact and on the potential of suitable innovations to reduce food wastes, lead to a broader concept of sustainable packaging and should drive future strategies for sustainability improvement. Packaging reduction and a shift to alternative materials and/or technologies should be especially addressed for products characterized by a high packaging relative impact; vice versa, when packaging represents a low burden compared to other life cycle phases, the overall environmental performance will be improved with measures aimed at reducing food waste, which, in turn, could imply an affordable increase in the packaging impact.