Browsing by Author "Lahtinen, Taina"

Both the ever-increasing littering problem and climate change mitigation have driven towards to develop more sustainable packaging solutions for food. Thus, a sustainability of a food package is a complex issue and needs careful analysis in order to ensure the paramount, the food safety. The recent research has concentrated to find novel solutions to replace for instance plastics as a packaging material. So far there has been very little data about the used food packaging materials and their volumes, especially in product groups, not only as single items. This thesis analysed the single food items sold in the Finnish supermarkets, by categorising the data into product groups and analysing the obtained product data further. The analysis focused to identify product groups for possible packaging material substitution, especially single-use plastics (SUP). Pre-determined criteria were used to identify the most interesting product groups for further research. The criteria included (i) sufficient volumes, either in packaging material weight in grams or in sales share, (ii) the suitability of the polymer type for recycling, and (iii) the possible impact of the SUP directive. The EU’s SUP directive (Directive (EU) 2019/904) sets several restrictions for the SUP use also in the food packaging industry. Therefore, there is a need to substitute some of the most harmful packaging materials. In most cases the main driver for substitution is the environmental impacts, especially littering and its prevention. This thesis concentrates to find possibilities to diminish the littering problem from the packaging material perspective.