Packaging key to curbing food insecurity arising from wastage

Packaging has been a heated talking point in Kenya lately. Triggered by the ban on production and use of plastic carrier bags, conversation focused more on the negative impacts of packaging, particularly on the environment. However, little attention has been paid to the significant benefits that packaging can potentially deliver in the socio-economic development of a country. This is besides the many employment opportunities that it has created across the value chain – from manufacturing and distribution to sale and recycling of plastic packaging material. 

Packaging has a critical role in curbing food wastage, which remains a major obstacle in efforts towards attaining food security. The Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO) estimates that 815 million people in the world – equivalent of 11 per cent of the global population -- go hungry and are undernourished. In Kenya, the World Food Programme’s latest statistics indicate that 3.4 million people are acutely food insecure at the moment.

Interestingly, these depressing statistics on the food situation notwithstanding, FAO states, the world already produces more than enough food for its people. This means that the gap in attaining food security lies in the post-harvest handling of produce. Apparently, 1.3 billion tonnes of the food produced in the world for human consumption is lost or wasted – this is the equivalent of one third of the global food production. Besides the direct food losses, there are other related losses, such as the resources used for production – from water, energy and land, to the unnecessary greenhouse gases emitted during production.

Packaging presents an opportunity to cut down on some of these losses. Research has shown that better packaging can halve the food losses in the world. Plastic packaging helps reduce food waste and spoilage, by protecting the quality and safety of food, preserving food freshness and extending shelf-life (up to three times more than non-packaged goods). The most important function of packaging is to protect the product inside the package.

Current agricultural practices in Kenya, and indeed the rest of Africa, barely preserve value at harvest. Packaging solutions, if well adopted, can transform agribusiness, by enabling farmers to pack at the farm and generate more value out of their produce, while increasing product shelf-life. This would be good news not only for the farmer, who would reduce losses and make more from their farms; but also the sector, which employs three out of five individuals in the Kenyan workforce.

Furthermore, with increasing intra-regional trade following the formation of regional blocs, such as the East African Community (EAC), packaging solutions support the needs of an evolving food supply chain, where goods need to travel longer distances to get to the final consumer safely.

Of course, concerns abound about the impact that additional packaging may have on the environment. However, data from environmental advisory firm, denkstatt, shows that the environmental benefits of food waste reduction are five times more than the impact of additional packaging. In addition to this, it is key to note that packaging, on its own, does not pollute the environment. It is actually human behaviour that causes littering. What the world needs is a concerted public education campaign to address the challenge of littering, coupled with effective waste management initiatives.

Sustainable packaging technology helps manufacturers to keep food fresher for longer and prevent product spoilage thus minimising costs and carbon footprints. Dow has pioneered tailor-made packaging solutions for a wide range of food, beverage and personal care applications that are aimed at ensuring that food and beverages arrive ‘fresh to table’. These have been used to package bread, snacks, confectionery, laminates for dry food, poultry, among other produce.

This, even as efforts towards delivering a world without hunger and malnutrition by 2030, as envisioned in the Sustainable Development Goals, gather pace. Less food waste on its way to the table is more and fresher food landing on plates of people.

-The writer is Dow’s EMEA Value Chain Manager.