Have you ever thought about eating your favorite snack without discarding it from its wrapper? Soon it will be possible. The consumption of organic products has increased considerably in Italy in recent years.

Consumers have become increasingly sensitive to environmental issues and when they buy food products, they are looking for healthy, high quality food.

In supermarkets these products are easily recognizable because they are protected by a particular type of packaging that apart from distinguishing them from other foods, they keep the product longer and preserve its quality.

But this is a contradiction because cultivating natural products, using renewable energy and wasting resources, clashes with the pollution caused by traditional industrial packaging.

For this reason, many companies are looking for alternative solutions, testing new forms of packaging and films.

Organic packaging

Research around organic packaging is very active.

There are numerous companies and startups that are proposing sustainable, edible and biodegradable packaging.

In recent years, several researches have been carried out with the aim of producing food films and coatings with natural substances and recovery products. Mushrooms and algae are the most commonly used natural substances.

Another very widely used substance is the olive leaf. A group of Spanish scientists from the Agricultural Technological Institute of Castile and Leon has demonstrated the beneficial properties of olive leaves whose effectiveness has been tested to pack fresh smoked salmon.

These new types of packaging, in addition to being biodegradable, produce significant benefits for the foods themselves. They have an antibacterial, antioxidant action and fight various pathogens, preserving the quality of the product better and longer.

How will the future of packaging be?

In the future, edible packaging will be the most used in the future.

These new solutions are showing even more futuristic applications:

• protective edible membrane for carbohydrate food, suitable for packaging of yoghurt and alcoholic beverages
• packaging with special tabs that change color when the food expires
• soluble packaging such as liquid food wraps (soups and soups)
• cans that can cool or heat the food in a few seconds