Eco Friendly Food Packaging

Eco-Friendly Food Packaging Wholesale Pricing Isn't as Far Off Standard Packaging as People Assume

Boxes made from sustainable materials are significantly more expensive than traditional plastic and coated paperboard, and the difference has significantly decreased as demand and production volumes have increased. The price of Eco-Friendly Food Packaging Wholesale is now in the range of 10 to 25 percent more expensive than the conventional packaging.

The price of Eco-Friendly Food Packaging Wholesale today is around 10 – 25 percent more expensive than conventional packaging, whereas a few years ago it was 40 – 50 percent more expensive. There are several things that will cause a certain order to land at a particular point within that range:

1. Material choice, since bagasse and molded pulp have narrowed to nearly cost parity while PLA films still carry more premium
2. Order volume, since eco materials benefit from the same bulk sourcing economics as conventional stock
3. Certification requirements, since third-party certified stock costs more than uncertified compostable material
4. Regional sourcing, since domestic eco material suppliers have grown enough to reduce the import premium that used to apply.

Eco-Friendly Food Packaging Solutions Depend on What the Food Actually Needs

Sustainability and functionality are not two distinct discussions when it comes to food packaging, because a compostable box that's leaky for grease or a faster spoiling shelf life is just as ineffective. The typical approach to eco-friendly food packaging solutions that are tailored to a product is to begin with the barrier requirement, rather than the material.

Dry goods can be grown in almost any compostable substrate and do not require much barrier protection. A grease resistant coating is required for oily or greasy foods; this has historically been provided by PFAS chemistry but is now being achieved by alternatives that are not based on PFAS chemistry and that are very similar in performance.

Eco-Friendly Dog Food Packaging Has to Solve Freshness Longer Than Most Human Food Ever Does

The storage time for pet food is tens of weeks or months after opening, much longer than the shelf life of most human food packaging products after opening. But the freshness and integrity of the packaging need to last the entire period of the open bag—even a month into the pantry—where some of the more fragile compostable work for a single serving of a human meal, but not a dog's.

For kibble bags in particular, it seems that re-usable multi-layer film containing a high proportion of recycled materials is the more viable sustainable choice as fully compostable film is unable to perform adequately in terms of oxygen and moisture barrier, which is essential to ensure kibbles don't go rancid. Wet food and treats will be more adaptable to compostable formats as they come with lower shelf life expectations.

Eco-Friendly Food Packaging Bags Split Into More Categories Than Just Compostable

Bags are treated as a single general category of ‘eco friendly' and in reality they are divided into individual categories of materials and have different actual performance. Eco-friendly Food Packaging Bags passing the sustainable side of the category commonly are classified into a few categories:

• Kraft paper bags with a compostable inner lining, common for bakery and dry goods, limited moisture resistance
• Compostable PLA-based pouches, clear or semi-clear, suited to snacks and produce needing some visibility
• Recycled-content plastic pouches, not compostable but reducing virgin plastic use, strongest barrier performance
• Mono-material recyclable pouches, a newer category using a single plastic type instead of mixed layers to enable actual recycling.

What Eco Friendly Food Packaging for Small Business Actually Needs to Prioritize First

The constraints that small food businesses have to overcome in terms of sustainable packaging are different and are typically related to minimum order quantities and costs at low volume. When it comes to eco-friendly food packaging for small business operations, it is typically restricted at lower budget and volume magnitudes than many of the sustainable packaging suppliers support as the minimums were designed for mid-size to large brand volume for many supplies.

Digital print on compostable or recyclable packaging is usually the most achievable approach to sustainable packaging for a business that is printing a few hundred or few thousand units a go, not thousands or tens of thousands.

Eco Friendly Packaging Materials for Food Vary Enormously in What Problem They Actually Solve

The raw materials for sustainable food packaging are well beyond the kraft paper and cardboard that most consumers imagine. Some of the other eco-friendly packaging materials for food are bagasse (moulding or forming sugarcane fiber into trays and clam shape packaging), using mushroom root structure to produce packaging (mycelium packaging mostly used for cushioning and still in early stages of commercial food packaging), packaging film from seaweed (used for packaging and still in the early stages of use and mostly used for edible or dissolvable packaging films), and recycled PET (not biodegradable but plastic is diverted from landfill through recycling for use).

Sustainable Food Packaging Decisions Get Easier With a Clear Priority Order

But sustainability in packaging is about doing what's right and there's always a compromise to be made, and brands that are attempting to go for the all-in-one solution are often setting themselves up for failure. Once a brand has selected one or two metrics to focus on and make decisions around, rather than making decisions on all metrics, Sustainable Food Packaging decisions tend to be quicker.

Often, source reduction offers better environmental gains than changing the type of material used in the product completely, and is less expensive than complete material type change. It is better to select materials that can actually be recycled by the local recycling system (recyclable-in-practice) than those that can only be composted (but there is no industrial composting plant nearby).

Eco-Friendly Food Packaging Supplies Need a Reliable Source Before They Need a Perfect Material

Reliability is more important than most brands give it credit for when it comes to sustainable packaging – if it's a perfect eco material but you can't always find it on the shelves for three months then it poses a greater problem than if it's a slightly-less-perfect material that's available at all times.

With unreliable sourcing, Eco-friendly Food Packaging Supplies have fried a number of small food brands that pledged on a specific compostable material only to discover that their supplier failed to keep up with their required lead times as sustainable materials grew in popularity throughout the industry.

Why the Packaging Tree Asks About End-of-Life Before Talking Material Options

Most of the sustainable packaging discussions begin with the material, bagasse or PLA or recycled kraft, but shouldn't start with what happens to the packaging after the consumer is done with it? At the Packaging Tree, the end-of-life question precedes any material suggestions because a well-designed package that is beautifully compostable, but ends up in a landfill because there is no local composting facility is less successful than a recyclable package that fits into an infrastructure that customers are already using correctly.

Tell the Packaging Tree where your customers are and what their packaging is, and based on their actual waste disposal, you'll get a recommendation for materials that is based on what's likely to be disposed of properly.