Taken from : www.greenbiz.it
In Italy, 13.2% of agricultural production is not harvested; every year, food waste amounts to about 15 billion euros, or 1% of the national GDP; almost every day, 55% of the Italian population throws something into the dustbin; and more than 4 million tons of Co2 are put into the atmosphere annually.
Truly impressive numbers and percentages, scanned by Alessandro Fulvi, marketing director of DS Smith, during the conference“Evolution of Packaging in the Food Industry: Trends, Regulations and Materials from a Recycling and Sustainability Perspective,” held Friday, Feb. 27, at CremonaFiere, the last day of BioEnergy Italy (CremonaFiere Feb. 25-27, 2015).
“In 2013, 11 million pieces of packaging were released for consumption in Italy,” explained Simona Fontana, Head of the Study Center of Conai (National Packaging Consortium), “and 67.7 percent of them were sent for recycling. From here we can understand how important it is to reduce the environmental impact of packaging designed to contain food. To achieve this goal, then, it is essential to design packaging to then differentiate, recycle and limit emissions as much as possible. In times of crisis and Expo, the topic of food and its wastefulness in industrialized countries is on the agenda. But when reflections are coupled with numbers of this magnitude, it is necessary to go deeper into the issue.
With good reason, then, we speak of sustainable packaging, which not only maintains the integrity of the product it contains while complying with regulations, but also meets the need to keep waste and environmental impact to a minimum. Industrial research does not stop, and to help consumers limit waste they are studying packaging that can change package color as the product approaches its expiration date.
This is currently a project, but as Marco Sachet of the Italian Packaging Institute mentioned, “if we want to reduce that 40 percent of food products that also go to waste because of missed expiration dates, we need to find a smart way to raise consumer awareness.”
In the meantime, however, while there is some difference between areas of the country, Italians’ ability to sort waste is being rewarded with flying colors.
“For the past 10 years we have been witnessing a significant growth in bioplastics,” stressed Massimo Centemero of the Italian Composters’ Consortium, “and this is thanks to separate waste collection, which in 2013, for organic waste, reached 42 percent, promoting 88 percent compost production, while the remaining 12 percent went into anaerobic digestion: just under 10 percent of Italian municipalities, about 700, guarantee 98 percent compostable waste.
