Packaging is worth a great deal. Here is why...
Photo: ©FAO/Eduard Porvatov
On 25 January, under the FAO SAVE FOOD initiative the FAO Liaison Office with the Russian Federation and Messe Dusseldorf Moscow held the 5th conference at the annual trade fair in Russia “Upakovka-22”, dedicated to the development trends of the packaging industry in the context of reducing food losses and waste.
“The purpose of our forum,” clarified Oleg Kobiakov, Director of the Liaison Office with the Russian Federation, “is to draw attention to the fact that packaging and packing play a major role in bringing all the created, cultivated, produced food from the field and the farm to the end consumer while avoiding losses and maintaining its quality at the same level as well as in ensuring a healthy diet. Packaging within agribusiness is one of the most dynamically developing sub-sectors of the industry. Given the paradigm of sustainable development, today it is impossible to maintain business as usual: it is necessary to take into account the environmental considerations and the target of reducing the carbon footprint of production which encourages to reuse or discard packaging. The requirements for packaging are becoming more stringent in terms of its safety. This industry is dynamic, science-driven and therefore it is promising and interesting.”
Thomas Stenzel, Managing Director, Messe Dusseldorf GmbH Moscow, welcomed the conference participants on behalf of the “Upakovka-2022” exhibition organizers: “I am very pleased to see you at our platform. Today, two years after the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we are sending a message to the stakeholders that we can do it both virtually and in-person and can present the best practices and results achieved by the sector.”
Vladimir Moshkalo, Head of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Russia Office, said that “the potential of losses and waste reduction is underestimated” since the calculations were “based on extrapolation of statistics from a small number of countries” that had adopted “not very good methods.” The UNEP expert pointed out three global crises: “The effects of climate change, biodiversity loss and environmental pollution.” Furthermore, “we throw away almost one billion tonnes of food a year!” Much of the blame for that lies with households, which makes us think about our behavioural stereotypes and “consumer habits”.
Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals is directly related to the scientific, practical, and pedagogical activities of the Moscow State University of Food Production (MSUFP), emphasized rector of MSUFP Mikhail Balykhin.
The rector believes that in order to reduce food waste two tasks should be implemented. “Firstly, food should be beneficial to a person”, and for this, the university is closely engaged in the creation of “high-tech bioproducts from organic raw materials” and focuses on the establishment of “lean production, which meets the requirement for personalized nutrition and leaves a minimal carbon footprint.”
Secondly, given that the largest amount of losses is observed in the production chain – up to 40 percent of the losses occur in the segment from the extraction of raw materials to the delivery of the final product to the consumer – “therefore, we underfeed 30 million people. For this reason, Mikhail Balykhin believes “packaging should become part of food production.” It is necessary to understand that “bio-product waste that decomposes in open dumps is more environmentally hazardous than the disposal of plastic packaging.” Unfortunately, “little attention has been paid to food waste recycling technologies.”
MSUFP promotes the idea of building a Biocity as “a model of sustainable development of rural areas, a social ecosystem for managing human health based on rational nutrition technologies, lean production, bioindustry, which are integral elements of the bioeconomy.” Two cities, Vladimir and Belgorod, are already cooperating with the University in this field.
“Food losses and waste reduction is not a goal in itself,” said Robert van Otterdijk, FAO Agro-industry Officer, FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia. “It is an essential part of efficient value chains that are the core of sustainable food systems which provide food and nutrition security, economic growth and climate change mitigation.”
An intervention to reduce food losses and waste, as the speaker stressed, shall not be “more expensive than the price of the lost food, shall not place a higher burden on the environment and greenhouse gas emissions. Its purpose is to make more food available to the people that need it most while ensuring its social and cultural acceptability.”
The FAO expert illustrated his messages with the best practices of the Russian agri-food sector, mentioning, in particular, the Entroprotek and Hermetia companies: “Both companies use technology based on the ability of the larvae of the insect Black Soldier Fly (Hermetia illucens) to process plant organic (food) waste. This allows using spoiled food and waste as efficiently as possible, returning the necessary feed protein obtained from the biomass of larvae to the food chain of farm animals and birds and developing new products based on the larvae.”
Marina Borovkova, Head of the International Research Department of the ANCO “Russian Quality System” (Roskachestvo), in her presentation “Packaging as an Element of Transition to Sustainability” highlighted that for the modern consumer packaging is a significant factor in food buying decision process. She accentuated the general trend of reducing excess packaging as well as the use of recyclable packaging.
In his presentation “Technical Regulation and Standardization of Packaging in Russia and EAEU”, Petr Bobrovsky, Chairman of the “Packaging” Technical Committee of the Federal Agency on Technical Regulation and Metrology (Rosstandart), gave a detailed definition of the concept of “packaging”, and clarified what basic packaging regulations exist.
Irina Kirsh, Head of the Department of Industrial Design, Packaging Technology and Expertise at MSUFP, told about trends in packaging materials. Tendencies in the world market of flexible packaging include a turning towards environmental friendliness, sustainable development and “circular economy”, recycling of packaging, increasing production of “biodegradable” packaging, “smart” packaging and others.
Galina Gracheva, Editor-in-Chief of “Natur Product” magazine, presented an overview of innovations and solutions in packaging aimed at reducing food waste and complemented them with such illustrative examples as removal of oxygen from packaging, protection against exposure to ethylene, absorption of moisture and condensation, use of natural protective properties of plants.
Summing up the discussion, Oleg Kobiakov noted that since the time of Ancient Rus there has been a traditional saying which literal translation is “to show the face of a product” [meaning to present something in the best possible light], and before everything else the face of a product is packaging, the functions of which are much more wide-ranging than just the one of “covering a product”. There is a growing awareness of producers and consumers about packaging and its functions, and the knowledge about packaging, which absorbs many achievements of various branches of science, is being accumulated, and we expect that the dialogue we have just held has contributed to the understanding of the specificity of this important sphere,” concluded the Director of the FAO Moscow Office.
The FAO conference was also attended by Tatiana Nagorskaya, Chairperson, Ecology and Environmental Protection Association “RazDel’ny Sbor”; Alina Likhachevskaya, “Green Packaging” Educational Course Supervisor, British Higher School of Art and Design; Mikhail Zamarin, General Director, BS Energo Group of Companies, Public Ombudsman for Ecology, Office of the Commissioner for the Protection of the Rights of Entrepreneurs in Moscow and other experts.
The moderator of the conference was Katerina Antonevich, Consultant, FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia.
A recording of the conference is available at the link.
Speakers’ presentations:
1) Robert van Otterdijk – SAVE FOOD Initiative on Food and Loss Reduction
2) Marina Borovkova – Packaging as an element of the transition to sustainability (in Russian)
3) Alina Likhachevskaya – Reducing packaging in food delivery (in Russian)
6) Mikhail Balykhin – Sustainable development: a packaging sector (in Russian)