Automatic Vegetables: Can Technology Improve Produce Packaging?

Food waste is a serious problem. According to National Geographic, one-third of food grown in the United States is “lost or wasted” before it ever reaches stove-tops or dinner tables. Some is mislabeled and thrown into landfills; some is improperly packaged, leading to spoilage or contamination. Is there a better way to get food from farm to fork?

Eat or Toss

One option to improve food packaging and limit waste revolves around edible alternatives. That’s the gamble of WikiFoods, which has created a frozen yogurt ball encased in an edible skin. As noted by NEPR, this outer shell is “made of fruit or coconut particles and a seaweed extract. It tastes sweet and it seems, well, just plain fun.” But when out for sale these yogurt balls are sold by twos, with each duo snug inside a plastic bag. Why? Because consumers still prefer some packaging and left unfrozen the balls will often start to “leak”, especially if they’ve been thawed and refrozen during transport.

Another option is to toss packaging altogether and opt for a “zero-waste” model. Crowd funded supermarket “Original Unverpackt” in Germany is doing just that, allowing customers to fill their own, reusable containers with exactly the amount of food they need, rather than buying in bulk and wasting what they don’t use. Critics of the model say it’s too expensive and isn’t sustainable on a large scale.

The Perfect Package?

In the United States, food packaging has evolved as a way to keep food fresh longer and help eliminate spoilage. Unfortunately, this same packaging can end up clogging landfills and damaging ecosystems. According to Food Processing, however, there’s a middle ground: fresh-food packaging that’s rapid, gentle, and uses a minimum of polyurethane plastic to safely seal and protect food.

Ideally, these packing systems eliminate the need for human contact, for example through the use of high throw conveyors to move wet produce or gate-less designs which reduce the risk of damage and waste. The use of electromagnetic drive systems can also impact overall efficacy by removing parts with high wear-and-tear such as shafts or gears.

Of course, all of this effort is wasted unless companies  integrate high-efficiency clean-in-place (CIP) systems able to remove both debris and contaminants without the need to dismantle machinery. Pair all this with high-speed PET bagging machinery — now reaching 150 bags per minute — and the result is well-handled, well-packaged, ready-to-transport produce.

Chain of Demand

Consumers want to know where their food comes from, how it gets handled and what kind of environmental impact it leaves behind. Initiatives like no-waste supermarkets and edible packaging have unique market value, but simply aren’t ready for commercial prime-time. By reducing bulk, limiting contamination and eliminating unnecessary damage using clean and efficient packaging, however, it’s possible to find a balance between fresh and fast.

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