John Burke
Executive Director Foodservice & Packaging Institute
“There’s a caveat with the general move toward biodegradable, compostable packaging.”
So much packaging is starting to speak to the environmental consciousness factor that we’re hearing more and more about it in the foodservice sector. There are groups out there raising operators’ awareness about some of those questions, and you’re seeing that reflected in how they’re positioning and promoting their packaging.
If you take a look at cups, for instance, there is a lot of merging of materials to create a thermoform characteristic in non-plastic packaging. Polystyrene foam is under attack, particularly in California, and converters are starting to look at other ways to make sure their customers are delighted. That’s why we see a coming-together of materials. And by marrying materials, we’re seeing the same performance characteristics with perhaps a lower environmental profile.
But there’s a caveat with the general move toward biodegradable, compostable packaging. Most all of those materials are purchased for a premium, mainly because there are all-new technologies and all-new materials, so you have a lot of front-loaded costs. My mantra to operators is: “It’s fine if you’re willing to pay the premium, but make sure you’re sending it to a municipal composting facility.”
If you’re going to put it in the normal municipal solid waste system, where it’s going to go in a landfill and it’s going to be entombed every day under six inches of dirt … the degradation there occurs very slowly, and in some cases not at all. Then you’re not getting the environmental characteristics that you paid for.
Tom Voss
Program Chair, Packaging Science, Rochester Institute of Technology
“It isn’t about coming up with something new; it’s about finding the right application for what we have.”
I think the biggest thing we see with packaging is that it isn’t about coming up with something new; it’s about finding the right application for what we have. It’s not about completely new innovation and new discoveries. We don’t have these quantum breakthroughs until we reach something like nanotechnology— what used to be used for medicine might be used for food now or vice versa.
Another big trend is what’s been called “GIZIGI,” which stands for “grab it, zap it, guzzle it.” It’s a demographic summary of how we live and eat on the go.
And finally, if packaging designers and developers are putting in developments that will work, what they’re doing is thinking about all their customers, not just the consumer. The customer for packaging is also someone who is going to handle the packaging in a warehouse and someone who stores it at the restaurant and someone who fills it and then someone who consumes it. Those who are being most successful with innovation and putting in customer utility think about the multiple customers throughout a material’s supply chain.