Food and Beverages Packaging

Future of Innovation: Bio-based Packaging

Bio-based food packaging materials are derived from renewable sources and are potentially biodegradable that is composting (which is a technique for waste management). Bio based packaging materials include both edible coatings and edible films along with primary and secondary packaging materials. At the turn of the last century most non-fuel industrial products; dyes, inks, paint, medicines, chemicals, clothing, synthetic fibres and plastics were made from bio based resources. During the last years, the leading world research teams have been working on developing new biodegradable and edible packaging based on renewable biological sources, the so called “regulated life cycle materials”. By the 1970s petroleum derived materials had, to a large extent, replaced those materials derived from natural resources. Recent developments are raising the prospects that naturally derived resources again will be a major contributor to the production of industrial products. Bio based /green polymers in food packaging are the wave of the future. The Scientific challenge is to find such applications and thus to create the demand for large scale production of biopolymers/ biomaterials that would help in attaining the sustainable development of green materials in contrast to petroleum.