Innovative biobased materials for packaging sustainability

Abstract

Food packaging is an integral and essential part of the food industry since it protects products from surrounding stress challenges, often of detrimental nature. Most of the currently used packaging plastics are produced from fossil resources because of the low cost and their advantageous properties such as lightness, flexibility, and sealability. However, increased use of petroleum-based packaging has led to major ecological problems due to their lack of biodegradability. In this context the use of biobased and biodegradable packaging recently has gained a considerable amount of interest. It can be defined as packaging that contains raw materials originating from agricultural and marine renewable sources. The aim of this chapter is to provide an overview on the recent scientific advances and applications in the field of biopolymer based packaging.