Ever rising population has resulted in the growth of food packaging industry. Time has come to look for new innovative materials for food packaging which are environment friendly along with improved barrier properties. The advent of Nanotechnology has revolutionized the food packaging industry and has led to extensive research on sustainable food packaging solutions using nanotechnology. The main objective is to reduce the plastic consumption and to look for a better replacement which can be recycled or supports low carbon circular economy apart from having improved antimicrobial/antioxidant, thermal, and mechanical properties. This chapter talks about the recent advancements and contributions of nanotechnology in providing sustainable food packaging solutions. Safety issues linked with the consumption of nanomaterials used in food packaging are also discussed at the end.
Top1. Introduction
Food packaging plays a vital role in food industry as it protects the food from contamination occurring due to various physical, chemical and biological sources and increase their shelf life by prevention of diseases and spoilage (Han 2018), (Agarwal 2022). Another important job of food packaging is to keep food safe during transportation. Chemical sources are: gain or loss of moisture, exposure to gases such as oxygen, and light. Biological sources are: microorganisms i.e. pathogens and spoiling agents, insects, rodents, and other animals. Physical sources are: mechanical damage (abrasions, and crushing damage) for example shock and vibration encountered during transportation and distribution. Appropriate packaging becomes even more important for delicate food items such as eggs and fresh fruits. To maintain the standard and quality of food products during transportation and storage, a good quality packaging material is of utmost importance. A good quality packaging material is generally characterized by mechanical strength, biodegradability, and gas and moisture permeability (Han 2018), (Agarwal 2022). Conventional food packaging materials are: glass, metals (aluminium, foils and laminates, tinplate, and tin-free steel), paper and paperboards, and plastics. Nanotechnology has come up with many new and advanced nanomaterials as alternative food packaging materials (Mohammad 2022). Nanoscience and Nanotechnology has revolutionized many sectors of society such as healthcare, medicine, transportation, energy, food safety, and environmental science, among many others (Jampilek 2019) (Mohammad2022). Nanotechnology deals with the materials having atleast one dimension in nanometer scale (1–100 nanometers). These nanomaterials have many unique properties such as high surface to volume ratio, enhanced catalytic activity, improved antimicrobial properties etc.. The smart food packaging materials based on nanotechnology are gaining a lot of interest owing to their enhanced antimicrobial properties along with biodegradability. Till today, most food packaging materials are based on petro-based plastics which are not biodegradable in nature. The reason for using plastics in packaging is its good performance along with low cost and easy handling during storage and transportation but these are not environment friendly because of the release of greenhouse gases like CO2 during the production of petroleum-based plastics. Again their disposal is also a problem due to the lack of collection and non-biodegradability, plastics land up in landfills or in water streams contaminating the oceans (Salwa et al., 2019). Although a lot of research is going on to find a more environment friendly method of production of plastic. Overexploitation of resources, environmental degradation even after being an age old problem still continues to be a major global challenge and moving towards sustainable innovations is the only solution. Sustainable innovations include development of novel products and technologies leading to a positive impact on humanity and environment. Different innovations spanning food industry, packaging, transportation and green energy to conserve resources have proven to be a boon in this time of crisis. However, be it in any field, these new innovations need to be ecologically and economically beneficial as well as socially balanced. In order to survive on this planet it is extremely important to look for products and services that could pave the way for more sustainable way of living. Sustainable food packaging is the future of food packaging industry as it uses environment friendly materials that can be used to wrap food items for storage and even for transportation. Sustainable packaging offers so many benefits such as: low carbon footprint, recyclable and biodegradable materials, health benefits, etc. Generally, food packaging materials which are biodegradable suffers from poor barrier and mechanical properties. Thus, there is a trade- off between sustainability and improved barrier properties. This trade-off will be addressed in this chapter. The chapter explains the advantages and drawbacks of using conventional food packaging materials along with recent nanotechnological advancements in food packaging industry which are more environment friendly and sustainable in nature such as edible coatings, bio-polymers and bio- nanocomposites etc. The chapter illustrates the impact of nanotechnology in the field of food packaging along with the discussion on the safety concerns associated with the use of nanotechnology based smart food packaging materials.