Food packaging is ubiquitous in the modern world but also easily forgettable: once we’ve dumped the crackers out of their bag and into our hand, or scraped the last of the yoghurt out of the bottom of its plastic pot, we usually toss the packaging into the bin without a second thought.
Yet packaging can play an essential role in supporting healthy diets: it can keep foods safe; help make them appealing, convenient, and long-lasting; and convey key information about them to consumers. At the same time, packaging is an important contributor to food system waste; food packaging accounts for about two-thirds of packaging waste by volume. Packaging can be a major contributor to food costs, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, where it often needs to be imported. It can also encourage the production and marketing of unhealthy foods, such as ultra-processed foods, and contaminate food with chemicals like PFAS (polyfluoroalkyl substances). Food packaging is also a major industry, worth $456 billion and projected to increase by over 60% by 2030.
As such, food packaging is a key component to consider when trying to make sure that safe, nutritious foods are available, affordable, and desirable to those who need them – without damaging the planet.
A recent GAIN working paper, written in collaboration with Inclusive Business Partners, explores three food packaging innovations that have been argued to make nutritious foods more accessible to lower-income consumers: small package sizes, reusable packaging, and bulk sales. Through a rapid literature review and key-informant interviews, we consider packaging material suitability and functionality, packaging costs, food safety, environmental sustainability, consumer perceptions, and supply chain logistics associated with each innovation.
Small-size (often single-serve) packaging responds to lower-income consumers’ limited cash on hand by selling a small quantity of a product at a lower price than the normal package size (though often at a higher per-unit price), usually using plastic-based packaging. This can be very convenient for the customer, and it also helps to ensure food safety, provide useful and necessary marketing and product information, and reduce the risk of food fraud. However, it is associated with relatively large amounts of greenhouse gas emissions and packaging waste, as even ‘recyclable’ plastics are rarely recycled, and the packaging tends to be relatively expensive (as a share of the product price).
Refillable packaging helps cut packaging costs by spreading the cost of the packaging over a larger number of re-uses by using glass, metal, or durable plastic containers that are returned to the food processor, cleaned, and refilled. This can result in a significant reduction in packaging waste and per-use packaging costs, but it also requires sophisticated logistics for recouping and washing the used containers while maintaining high food safety standards.
Selling products in bulk, usually using some type of dispenser, eliminates the need for packaging (or shifts the onus for providing it to the consumer) and allows consumers to buy as much or as little as they want. It can thus result in significant cost savings and waste reduction. However, it increases the risk of contamination and food fraud, and may not always be acceptable to consumers. Spoilage rates may also be higher, and product information may not always be provided.
Each approach thus has advantages and disadvantages, and it is clear that there is scope for more innovation to develop new approaches that can provide the flexibility, convenience, and safety benefits of small package sizes while also delivering the environmental sustainability and cost-savings of reusable packaging and bulk sales.
Read the paper here:
And the brief based on it here: