Simon Lockrey

Life cycle assessment (LCA) of food and beverage packaging

Emerging food packaging technologies are promising packaging innovations that can provide competitive advantages to improve the food distribution system. A food packaging innovation may be advanced to become an emerging technology if its developers can apply sound science in a creative and cost-effective manner to fulfill some import and timely socioeconomic needs such as improving food safety and security. The successful development and commercialization or emerging technologies often requires thinking inside and outside the box, developing innovative approaches and solutions to address specific needs and integrating them smoothly and effectively into the existing system. To develop breakthrough packaging technologies, multidisciplinary teams with expertise, not only in packaging science and engineering, but also in disciplines such as food engineering, information techno logy, nanotechnology, and socio-economics are often needed.

Selecting and Applying Tools

Many tools to support design for sustainability are now available. This chapter provides a general overview of tools commonly used in packaging design and examples of their application.