The Effect of Active Packaging on Minimizing Food Losses: Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) of Essential Oil Component-enabled Packaging for Fresh Beef

Packaging plays an important role in ensuring food safety and quality, and the development of active packaging, especially antimicrobial packaging, enables actively inhibiting/killing the microorganisms causing food spoilage and thus extending the product's shelf life. A survey of the publicati...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Packaging technology & science 2015-09, Vol.28 (9), p.761-774
Main Authors: Zhang, Hai, Hortal, Mercedes, Dobon, Antonio, Bermudez, Jose M., Lara-Lledo, Marta
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
active packaging
Beef
Categories
food losses
Foods
Global warming
Life cycle assessment
life cycle assessment (LCA)
Packaging
Sensitivity analysis
Shelf life
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Summary:Packaging plays an important role in ensuring food safety and quality, and the development of active packaging, especially antimicrobial packaging, enables actively inhibiting/killing the microorganisms causing food spoilage and thus extending the product's shelf life. A survey of the publications revealed that generally 50% shelf life extension is possible. The goal of this study is to assess the overall environmental performance of the food and packaging system considering the effect of food loss reduction by using active packaging. A comparative life cycle assessment has been carried out, focusing on a case study: essential oil component‐enabled packaging for fresh beef. Different scenarios were set up to contrast the situations of food using conventional packaging (current situation) and food using novel active packaging (containing active coating). Additionally, a sensitivity analysis has been integrated, aiming to identify the breakeven point of the balance. In the scenarios using the best‐performance active packaging, it was shown that a breakeven point can be achieved across the four impact categories evaluated, including global warming, fossil energy demand, acidification potential and eutrophication potential. It is expected that the obtained results would serve as guidelines for active packaging development striving for a positive eco‐profile of the food and packaging system. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. The objective of this study is to assess the overall eco‐profile of the food packaging system considering the positive effect of minimizing food losses by using active packaging based on a case study on beef using essential oil component as active agent. A life cycle assessment has been carried out, and it was shown that in the case of the best‐performance active packaging used, it was possible to achieve the breakeven point across all the impact categories concerned, which is a remarkable environmental merit for promoting the use of active packaging.
ISSN:0894-3214
1099-1522
DOI:10.1002/pts.2135