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Advancing bio-based materials for sustainable solutions to food packaging

Nature Sustainability volume 6, pages 360–367 (2023)Cite this article

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Abstract

The unprecedented accumulation of plastic waste forms a serious threat to the biosphere, and current recycling efforts are not living up to their promise. Replacements for synthetic plastics are therefore critically needed, which has led to a rapid growth in research surrounding the development of sustainable materials, such as bioproducts. Still, commercialization has been limited, as knowledge gaps separating publicly funded research from industrial implementation need to be overcome. The food-packaging sector is currently undergoing drastic transformations in phasing out plastics and can therefore provide a blueprint for catalysing the adoption of bioproducts that could be applicable to other sectors.

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Fig. 1: Main challenges in the adoption of new bio-based systems by different industrial streams.
Fig. 2: Solutions proposed to optimize experimental designs for integrating and implementing findings on bio-based systems.
Fig. 3: Workflow for researching bio-based materials and implementing them into the packaging sector as associated with Table 1 and Supplementary Table 2.

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Acknowledgements

This work received funding from the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 788489, ‘BioElCell’). J.J.R. is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (project no. FT210100669) funded by the Australian government and JSPS Fellowship P20373 from the Japanese Society for the Promotion of Science. B.L.T. is the recipient of the Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KUST) Faculty Startup Project (Project: FSU-2022-021).

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Blaise L. Tardy, Joseph J. Richardson, Luiz G. Greca.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Bioproducts and Biosystems, School of Chemical Engineering, Aalto University, Aalto, Finland

    Blaise L. Tardy, Luiz G. Greca & Orlando J. Rojas

  2. Department of Chemical Engineering, Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    Blaise L. Tardy

  3. Department of Materials Engineering, School of Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan

    Joseph J. Richardson

  4. School of Engineering, RMIT University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia

    Joseph J. Richardson

  5. BMI Center for Biomass Materials and Nanointerfaces, College of Biomass Science and Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu, China

    Junling Guo

  6. Bioproducts Institute, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Department of Chemistry, and Department of Wood Science, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada

    Junling Guo & Orlando J. Rojas

  7. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, Grenoble INP (Institute of Engineering Univ. Grenoble Alpes), LGP2, Grenoble, France

    Julien Bras

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Contributions

B.L.T., L.G.G., J.J.R. and J.B. contributed to the conceptualization, investigation and writing of the original draft. J.G. and O.J.R. discussed and edited the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Blaise L. Tardy.

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Nature Sustainability thanks Ramesh P. Babu, Run-Cang Sun and Yael Vodovotz for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Supplementary information

Supplementary Information

Supplementary Tables 1–3, Fig. 1 and Discussions 1–6.

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Tardy, B.L., Richardson, J.J., Greca, L.G. et al. Advancing bio-based materials for sustainable solutions to food packaging. Nat Sustain 6, 360–367 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-022-01012-5

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