Quality- and sustainability- related issues associated with biopolymers for food packaging applications: a comprehensive review (Chapter 14)

Packaging has been defined as a socioscientific discipline that operates in society to ensure the delivery of goods to the related ultimate consumers in the best condition intended for their usage [1]. It is also defined as a coordinated system of preparing goods for transport, distribution, storage, retailing, and end use. It can be considered as a means of ensuring safe delivery in sound condition at optimum cost, and a techno- commercial function aimed at optimizing the delivery costs, while maximizing sales and, hence, profits [1]. The packaging sector represents almost 2% of the gross national product in devel- oped countries and, in particular, food packaging is approximately 50% by weight of total packaging sales [1,2]. This is why this chapter was focused just on the use of packages for food applications investigating briefly but exhaustively the related tech- nology, quality, and sustainability issues. Food packaging lies at the very heart of the modern food industry and can be con- sidered as being characterized by a multidisciplinary nature. In the process of pack- age design and manufacture, technologists are required to bring to their professional duties a wide-ranging background drawn from a multitude of disciplines (i.e., chem- istry, physics, food technology, environmental and industrial engineering, economy, and so on) [1]. However, planning a food package is a serious and complicated proce- dure, because different requirements, sometimes contradictory to each other, should be taken into account [3]. As a matter of fact, food packages play multiple key roles, not just because they contain, protect, and preserve foods in all phases of their dis- tribution chains but also because they report on essential information for their better handling by consumers. In line with the definitions provided at the beginning of this section, packages are designed mainly to maintain the benefits of food processing after the process is complete, thus enabling foods to travel safely for long distances from the production to the marketing sites, and still be wholesome at the consumption time [2]. This well shows why supply chains of unpacked foods would be impossible to