Really challenging the status quo

Challenging conventional wisdom, The Waste Policy Officer for the European Environmental Bureau, Piotr Barczak, is down on packaging as a means to limit food waste.

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Fourth in a series of articles reporting on Sustainability in Packaging, Europe 2017, from Barcelona, Spain.

Piotr Barczak warned the audience at Sustainability in Packaging, Europe 2017, that his ideas were radical and disruptive. At the tail end of his presentation, pressed to complete his remarks, he threw up one last slide challenging the notion that packaging is a solution to the food waste problem.

Food waste is a huge problem worldwide, and packaging is often touted as a solution for keeping food fresh through the supply chain, by extending shelf life at the grocery store, but Barczak’s slide suggested packaging is only a “very limited” part of the solution. According to Barczak, packaging is part of the current model that supports overconsumption, globalization, and a single-use society that creates a huge amount of waste. He also called out promotional packaging, where two products are wrapped together, as being particularly wasteful.

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