With an ever-growing focus on planet preservation from both a community and federal perspective, industries in all sectors are making strides toward reducing their products’ environmental footprint. The snack food industry enjoys a wide scope of community engagement and is actively pursuing more sustainable options for the flexible packaging they use.
The Importance of Snack Food Packaging Sustainability
A recent survey taken by Swedish food processing company Tetra Pak revealed consumers are now more cognizant of, and also on the lookout for sustainable food packaging products. 37% of respondents reported they look for environmental logos and taglines on product packaging and 54% find eco labels trustworthy.
With this in mind, packaging manufacturers worldwide have been exploring newer and more effective ways to enhance the sustainable attributes of existing packaging and to develop new materials and processes to manufacture snack food packaging in a more eco-friendly manner.
Sustainable Packaging and Snack Foods
Many readers may remember Frito Lay’s well-intentioned attempt to introduce compostible bags for their Sun Chips brand in 2008. While the packaging’s sustainable attributes significantly “raised the bar,” consumer acceptance and adoption was lukewarm for reasons not at all related to the packaging’s eco-friendly impact on the waste stream. Since then, other companies have made meaningful strides in their efforts to elevate sustainability through the use of new packaging materials and designs. In 2010, snack food manufacturer Boulder Canyon introduced compostible packaging manufactured from a cellulose-based flexible film that is able to compost within 6 weeks. Current activity, in which LPS Industries is directly involved, includes the use of nano-coated flexible packaging films in the snack food industry. Nano films are produced by coating a traditional packaging film, e.g., PET or OPP, with an extremely thin layer of nano particles that greatly enhance’s the barrier properties of the carrier film. The benefit to the snack food industry is a lighter weight material delivering a long shelf life without any reduction in product quality or customer satisfaction.
LPS Industries prides itself on sustainability practices and assists customers in understanding the environmental impact of their unique flexible packaging needs. By determining the intersection of barrier, sustainability and cost, LPS helps consumer snack food marketers achieve the optimum flexible solution.
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