Safety & Compliance of Sustainable Packaging

Packaging is among the top priorities of food companies when it comes to sustainability. In recent years, new materials have been developed to combat plastic pollution. These materials include renewables, recyclables, recycled materials, compostables, monomaterial products, lightweight packaging, and reusable/refillable options.

The multiplication of policies on packaging prevention and recycling all over the world is a strong indicator that “green packaging” is not just a trend. It will significantly impact the market. The safety of all these new materials is a major topic, in particular for food contact suitability.

Mérieux NutriSciences conducts risk assessments for all packaging materials in contact with food products. We assist in ensuring the safety of these materials and their market suitability. Our focus is on the safety and market suitability of your packaging materials.

What are the Main Challenges of Sustainable Packaging?

• Compliance: There is an increasing pressure from regulatory bodies to accelerate the path to sustainable Packaging. Despite efforts in the EU to harmonize sustainable packaging regulation under the Farm-to-Fork strategy and the Packaging & Packaging waste draft regulation, the local heterogeneities in the definitions, application of regulation, means, etc., make it difficult to have a global approach. A very local understanding of the regulation is becoming necessary to export packaged products. 
• Safety: As EU regulation (and worldwide regulations) is pushing for more recycled materials incorporation, recycling and refill systems, there is a need to understand the safety risks, how to surveil and mitigate them. The emergence of new risks requires specific monitoring and analytical screenings. 
• Traceability: As of today, there is no analytical method to confirm an amount of recycled content in a material. Thus, to ensure safety of materials, to make a claim or just to comply with EU future regulation, one of the recommended approaches is to have a strong traceability system with packaging/raw materials suppliers, to avoid fraud and ensure safety steps are respected.
• Market Acceptance: There can be a wide gap between the factual sustainability of a packaging and the perception of the ‘Sustainability’ characteristics by consumers. Claims substantiated by Life-Cycle Analysis (LCA) are a good tool to promote and enable consumers to make the right choice regarding sustainability. Sensorial characteristics of the product might also be tested with consumers to check attractiveness, usability and overall perception.

Our Comprehensive Approach to Sustainable Packaging

We are Food & Packaging Experts

Consumers’ safety is at the heart of what we do. As Food and Packaging safety specialists, we have developed a thorough knowledge of migration risks by material types, by type of food in contact with the package and by usage. 

Packaging is changing and so are the risks: we take pride in always making our knowledge evolve on emerging risks and ensuring we follow the latest recommendation and scientific findings. We participate in different research programs of universities, states and workgroups of regulators to increase global knowledge on new risks. 

Along with state of the art equipment to test packaging, our team of experts are helping you to make the best decision for your products and your business, help you build your packaging management strategy and advise you on the best course of actions.

Our Strong Focus on Sustainability 

Sustainability will be the key challenge of the Packaging sector for the years to come. Our sustainability experts team has worked on dedicated solutions to support the transition to sustainable alternatives. 

Packaging & Sustainability

Biodegradability & Compostability

Recyclability of Packaging

Green Claims