Sustainability Trade-Offs in Food Packaging: The Functional Sustainability Perspective

This multidisciplinary chapter brings together and discusses the sustainability dimensions of food packaging: environmental, social and cultural, and economic. It puts forward the idea that sustainability of food packaging should be assessed against the different functions that a package has in the value chain. The chapter develops a framework for sustainability trade-offs by introducing the sustainability dimensions of food packaging vis-à-vis the functions of food packaging. This entails identifying imperatives for sustainability that cannot be compromised. The framework helps to identify the aspects that can eventually be traded in real-life sustainability decisions and provides a practical framework for different actors to assess the multitude of aspects of sustainability not only with regard to packaging, but also elsewhere.