Sustainable Food Packaging: 12 Wrappers That Won’t Wreck Our Planet

Not only do our appetites consume more than 228 million metric tons of plastic food packaging annually, but it’s often accompanied by hazardous chemicals. Think: adhesives, coatings, plasticizers, flame retardants, colorants, biocides, stabilizers, impurities, and solvents, to name a few.

Fancy a granola bar wrapped in these chemicals? Us neither.

Doing something a little differently, sustainable food packaging companies are exploring both tried and tested and new and innovative materials to make our food wrappers a little greener. So let’s rip, tear, twist, and unzip our way through some most sustainable food packaging examples.

This is a bit of an obvious one, but no packaging is always the best choice. In addition to being better for our planet, buying in bulk is generally cheaper, too.

The only con is that you’ll have to find a local bulk store or wait for your delivery to be shipped from bulk stores online. Even without one nearby, you can still cut down on food-related packaging by bringing your own bags, asking the deli or meat counters to fill your reusable containers instead of using a single-use plastic bag, and choosing produce that’s packaged naturally—in its own skin!

While local options are limited in many parts of the world, the recent growth of the zero waste trend hopefully bodes well for growth in bulk stores, too.

Cardboard is (sometimes) recyclable, biodegradable, and compostable, able to fully break down in just 2-3 months in most conditions. In addition to having an end-of-life fate that’s far better than single-use plastics, cardboard is effective and inexpensive. No surprise then that it’s one of the most popular types of sustainable food packaging.

Because it’s lighter and can be folded and flattened, it uses less space during storage, which can reduce shipping emissions. Compared with plastics like PET, PP, and PVC, this helps cardboard achieve a carbon footprint that’s up to 90% lower.

The one big drawback to cardboard food packaging is that it’s made from timber. Pine trees are the usual choice, with a single tree producing about 151 cardboard boxes. To satisfy cardboard consumption in the US alone, about 493 million trees are needed annually.

Fortunately, about 68% of the cardboard we use is recycled and blended with lumber industry byproducts, like wood chips and sawdust.

Another major con to cardboard food packaging is that food residue and grease can render cardboard non-recyclable if not cleaned properly (as it rarely is). Unlike plastic recycling, there is no high-heat stage to burn off such residues. As such, oil is considered the worst contaminant in paper recycling, meaning you’re doing more harm than good by tossing those greasy pizza boxes into the blue bin.

Glass is one of the other most common sustainable packaging materials for food. Jars and bottles made from glass can also be reused, making them the ideal choice for everything from plastic free food storage containers to vessels for preserving food at home.

From health, environmental, and taste perspectives, glass can’t be beat. Glass is infinitely recyclable and, unlike most of these other materials, it doesn’t suffer from a loss in purity or quality during the recycling process. An estimated 80% of recovered glass bottles are transformed into new ones—in as little as 30 days, to boot.

Glass is impermeable and nonporous and has almost zero chance of chemical interactions, meaning the foods it contains will retain their aromas and flavors (without imparting toxic chemicals).

However, the glass vs plastic debate is a tricky one. Glass requires a lot of heat during manufacturing, as well as a significant amount of natural and non-renewable resources (like minerals and sand). It’s heavier, too, which means much higher transportation emissions.

While recycled glass does outperform plastic, that’s only if it’s done properly. A lot of glass (looking at you, broken glass) is “wishcycled”. When material recovery facilities refuse the glass, it ends up in landfills where it can remain for one million years (a decomposition rate significantly slower than plastic).

Aluminum is another option that’s hygienic, non-tainting, non-toxic, and impermeable ensuring food retains flavor and aroma.

Because aluminum is lightweight, it can have smaller transportation emissions than heavier materials, like stainless steel and glass. Recycling aluminum requires just 5% of the energy that was used during its original production. It’s also indefinitely recyclable without degradation in quality—whereas materials like plastic are downgraded into less stable substances each time they’re recycled.

The US does okay with a 50% recycling rate of beer and soda cans, our aluminum food packaging rate is just 34.9%.

And when it’s not made from recycled aluminum, virgin production requires the raw material bauxite—a notorious water, air, and soil polluter. It’s also a significant driver of deforestation in countries like Jamaica and Brazil. If you find yourself eating or drinking out of aluminum, be sure to recycle it.

Stainless steel is a prized metal alloy and type of sustainable food packaging because it’s highly resistant to corrosion, doesn’t tarnish or react with food, and can withstand high temperatures. It’s also extremely strong and durable, which is why you often find it used in cutlery, cookware, eco-friendly lunch boxes, and other kitchen essentials.

Of all known materials, the lifecycle of stainless steel is associated with one of the lightest environmental impacts on the planet. Not only is it long-lasting, but it’s also 100% recyclable—going back into something that is just as tough and durable as the original product.

The downside to stainless steel is the high production cost which is why you don’t see it used for disposable food packaging.

Because of its quick-growing nature and the fact that it releases 35% more oxygen than the equivalent amount of trees, pandas aren’t the only ones who love bamboo. In clothing, the use of bamboo fabric is growing almost as fast as the plant itself. In its less processed wooden form, the material is also being used in a range of other products.

Bamboo offers decent mechanical and thermal properties and doesn’t require added toxins or harsh chemicals, making it ideal for food packaging.

While it isn’t as durable as some other types of packaging, it is biodegradable. Those bamboo utensils in your zero waste kit can end up supporting Earth, instead of releasing microplastics. Depending on conditions, bamboo can compost in as little as 2-6 months.

The only downside to bamboo is that it’s most often used in reusable food packaging, such as utensils and plates. It rarely replaces disposable plastic wrappers and clamshells—yet.

Offering similar characteristics to polyethylene, polypropylene, and polystyrene, PLA, or polylactic acid, is the most widely used commercial bioplastic, and is starting to get used as an alternative to lightweight plastic bags, wrappers, and films.

This bioplastic is produced from fermentable sugars (corn, sugarcane, sugar beet, cassava, etc.)—not fossil fuels.In some cases, these are sourced as waste byproducts. When it replaces conventional plastic, bioplastics like PLA have the potential to reduce industrial emissions by 25%.

PLA is biodegradable and in the perfect conditions of a commercial composting facility can break down in 45-90 days. BUT when this new bioplastic has been put under scrutiny, some research has begun to challenge its biodegradability in usual conditions, finding that it remains unchanged in moderate-temperature soil after 24 months.

Worse, it is practically non-degradable in seawater—which we know is where a lot ends up. Unless it finds its way to an industrial composting facility or soil environment hotter than 122°F (50°C), it may look just like traditional plastic at the end of its life.

Where PLA provides strength, PBAT (polybutylene adipate terephthalate) provides flexibility and rapid biodegradability. But unlike PLA, PBAT is fossil fuel-based.

However, it’s carefully designed to be biodegradable under usual soil conditions. PBAT can actually biodegrade faster than PLA, and even some natural forms of food packaging—like banana peels and avocado skins.

Unfortunately, when PBAT and PLA are combined, they’ve been found to be responsible for the same amount of microplastics as traditional plastic. Early studies have indicated that these new plastics (especially when blended) may have an even higher environmental burden than petrochemical plastic.

Time will tell how these two will fare as sustainable food packaging trends but it’s currently clear that more development and end-of-life solutions are needed.

Bridging the gap between safety and sustainability, countries like the UK and US are beginning to shift their perception regarding recycled plastic packaging. Warming up to a circular economy, both regions have developed legislation in recent years to permit some use of recycled materials in food packaging.

In most cases, this has been limited to rPET use in beverage bottles.

While food industry giants Unilever and Nestlé have begun to use food-grade recycled plastics in some of their products (likely for-profit incentives over anything else), recycled plastic is environmentally friendly food packaging that’s still approached with some skepticism.

75% of our food packaging is made with polypropylene (PP) and polyethylene (PE) and we have yet to recycle enough of those materials at a food-grade standard to be used for our favorite eco-friendly snacks. But driven by these powerful multinational companies, we may eventually get to this point.

Even so, remember that recycling only works once or twice for plastic before it downgrades so much that it can’t escape its fate of ending up in a landfill or incinerator.