Smart packaging is an eco-friendly choice: wisely designed food packaging protects the contents in the same way as the dry and hard scale of a pine cone protects its seeds. Packaging ensures that the product remains intact, pure and fresh all the way from the production plant to the dining table.

Inside the nearly 200-metre long paperboard machine, pure pulp is converted into strong but lightweight folding boxboard and food service paperboard at a speed of one kilometre per minute. 

The fresh fibre paperboard is wrapped into a huge jumbo reel weighing 30 tonnes. Using a winder, the paperboard is cut into reels of suitable size. Some of the paperboard is also cut in a sheet cutter into sheets for customers who produce consumer packaging for cereals, chocolates and many other products. 

At the mill, there are signs everywhere that remind people about safety, because the hygiene and safety requirements are extremely strict for paperboard that comes into contact with food. 

Purity is the number one priority 

Packaging protects the product  

Well-designed and optimised packaging protects the product from chemical, biological and physical impacts throughout its life cycle. It also ensures that the food product is delivered intact, pure and fresh from the production plant to the shop shelf, and further to the dining table. 

“When a consumer picks a package from the shop shelf, the packaging has already fulfilled one of its most important tasks: it has protected the food product throughout the logistics chain, ensuring that the valuable product ends up intact and fresh where it belongs – that is, to be consumed by people,” says Punkka. 

Packaging plays a minor role in the environmental footprint

The environmental impacts of food mainly arise from primary production. For most food products, the production of packaging plays a minor role in their total environmental impact: only a few per cent. 

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, up to a third of all food produced ends up in waste – which burdens both the environment and the economy. 

“In developing countries, waste is caused by insufficient infrastructure, among other factors. In developed countries, part of the environmental footprint arises from consumers’ food waste, in addition to primary production,” says Anu Rehtijärvi, Market Intelligence Manager at Metsä Board. 

Finns throw away 20–25 kilos of food per year that is still edible. In other words, the food thrown away by a Finnish family of four is worth up to EUR 500 per year. 

“The annual environmental impact of the food waste generated in our entire food chain is equivalent to the annual emissions from up to 350,000 passenger cars,” says Juha-Matti Katajajuuri, Senior Scientist at Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke). 

Smart packaging reduces food waste

The emissions from unnecessarily produced food are much higher than the environmental impacts of the production and reuse of packaging for the entire amount of food. 

“For example, if one slice from a of ham package is wasted, the climate effect of that single slice is equal to the climate load caused by the production and reuse of the entire ham package,” says Katajajuuri. 

In other words, giving up packaging will not solve environmental problems. Instead, packaging is one way to reduce food waste and unnecessary environmental load.