It is not enough to make the packaging environmentally friendly if we do not deal with the conservation and sustainable management of food

The incredible post-war development of the packaging sector and access to food by the world population is also due to the creation of the so-called cold chain, which has allowed food to be preserved over a longer period of time and in larger areas.

The ready-to-use product industry has therefore developed, increasing per capita purchases, as the possibility of food consumption over several days has grown and long-term preservation has been created through freezers.

With the advent of this chain, companies have been created that build automatic machines for packaging, food preservation, transport, packaging and for storage.

There is no doubt that food products, through the cold chain, can reach many more families, especially in developed countries, where industrialization and globalization of food sales requires the management of certain temperatures for preservation.

There are two important aspects to consider:

The environmental impact of the cold chain

The links of this chain start directly after harvesting in the field or slaughtering the head or fishing for fish, this to allow the natural process of aging and decomposition of food.

So food must always be processed, packaged, transported and stored at a constant temperature of a few degrees, an operation that consumes a lot of energy.

This energy, for now, mainly depends on fossil sources and this creates the dispersion of CO2 into the environment, which has a catastrophic impact on climate change.

It is necessary that the cold lines are rethought, certified and declared environmentally friendly, if they can demonstrate that the energy used, from the field to the shelf, comes from sources renewable.

This applies to all sectors, even the industrial ones, in fact, we cannot push citizens to buy the electric car if they then have to recharge it with energy coming from the sources fossils, risking to slip into greenwashing.

Even the cold chain must be in line with the demands of the population in environmental terms, creating a zero-emission supply chain.

Food waste

The estimate of foodstuffs that are lost every year in the world amounts, according to data from the International Institute of Refrigeration, to 1.6 million tons, which could be spared if sustainable and widespread forms of refrigeration spread to developing countries.

In many countries, it is not the lack of fresh produce that creates situations of malnutrition, but its deterioration due to heat, poor road infrastructure, unequipped means of transport and insufficient electricity network.

With the amount of wasted food, about nine hundred and fifty million people could be fed every year, so an efficient refrigeration chain in developing countries makes the difference , between life and death.

However, both the European Union and the British Government had initiated programs for the insertion of cold rooms in farms, for example in Rwanda, but the lack of creation of a synergistic system that contemplated the refrigerated storage after the fruit or vegetable harvest, the low-temperature insulated transport from the countryside to the city markets, the positioning of energy-independent systems and the education of farmers to produce foods with greater added value, has wrecked the projects.

Between thirty and fifty percent of all food produced in developing countries is lost, discarded, unsold and not consumed, thanks to food chains. weak or nonexistent cold.

For farmers who survive on less than a couple of dollars a day, the effect of these losses is substantial; for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole, they are estimated to amount to hundreds of billions of dollars annually.

Automatic translation. We apologize for any inaccuracies. Original article in Italian.