February 15, 2025
How can the packaging industry responsibly reduce its environmental footprint? Materials science is overflowing with innovative ideas.
Some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs have come from teamwork—and the realm of packaging for food and beverage is rife with opportunities for collaborative innovation. Bridging essential sectors like sustainability, material development, and food safety, the packaging industry has taken great strides towards reducing packaging’s carbon footprint and improving its recyclability while keeping food and beverage safe. But there is plenty of room for further innovation.
“We collaborate with leading scientists and researchers across a range of fields to explore the latest technology and new materials, so we can continue to evolve our carton packages toward the world’s most sustainable
food packaging1,” explains Joakim Tuvesson, Vice President of Materials and Packaging at Tetra Pak.
Learning from the past to innovate for the future
The realm of material science has made leaps and bounds over the past century. Our understanding of the potential use for materials is light-years ahead of where it was decades ago, and this offers a wide-ranging field of opportunity for researchers to play within.
“Just think about Bill Hoyt, the gold-winning Olympian pole vaulter from 1896, who used a hickory wood pole to achieve a height of 3.30 meters,” says Professor Rajni Hatti-Kaul, a professor of Biotechnology at Lund University. “While that was impressive 130 years ago, it pales in comparison to today’s athletes, who use fibreglass and carbon poles to reach over 6 meters!”
“The more renewable and recyclable materials can be used in a packaging solution, the lighter an environmental footprint it leaves.”
But advancements in material technology are not without disadvantages. On a global scale, we are facing pressing environmental challenges associated with modern materials, particularly plastics derived from fossil-fuel-based sources. These materials are non-renewable resources that currently contribute approximately 4% of global greenhouse-gas emissions.
You don’t just create a new material overnight
Luckily, this dilemma has inspired a generation of innovative material researchers to look for opportunities elsewhere. Beyond the indisputable priority of maintaining quality and hygiene standards, two properties are particularly crucial in the context of packaging: renewability and recyclability. The more renewable and recyclable materials can be used in a packaging solution, the lighter an environmental footprint it leaves.
But to succeed in developing more sustainable packaging solutions without comprising in food safety, you need to be committed, as there is often a lead time of up to 20 years when it comes to developing new materials and technologies. Velcro, for example, took 10 years to research and develop.
A shift toward more renewable materials
Minimising the carbon footprint of packaging starts at the beginning, with its constituent materials and the ways they’re sourced. And the industry is well on its way to developing alternatives to fossil-fuel-based materials that take less of a toll on the environment.
“We’re just now beginning to scratch the surface, but there is wonderful potential in plant-based polymers, to name one, which can be created using green chemistry and metabolic engineering of microorganisms,” says Professor Hatti-Kaul. “These methods allow for the production of building blocks that can be used in plastics and offer very powerful viable alternative to fossil-based materials.”
“There is often a lead time of up to 20 years when it comes to developing new materials and technologies.”
Tetra Pak has already surged ahead in this field, using plant-based polymers for caps and packaging-material coating, as well as developing a paper-based barrier as an alternative to the aluminium foil layer used in traditional aseptic cartons. And the future looks promising: research and development into new materials is paving the way for a systemic shift in polymer production and sustainable recycling.
“Through new production techniques and processes, researchers are working hard to help reduce our reliance on fossil fuels,” Professor Hatti-Kaul adds. “This would really minimise the environmental impact of packaging materials.”
Bringing together material specialists and model builders
Working to incorporate a higher ratio of renewable and recyclable materials into packaging is just one piece of a highly complex puzzle. That puzzle must include a fastidious attention to food safety, as well. That’s why there is a clear need for collaboration between material specialists, experimentalists, and model builders, who can together create comprehensive models that accurately predict how these materials will behave in real-world applications.
“We’re just now beginning to scratch the surface, but there is wonderful potential in bio-based polymers, which can be created using green chemistry and metabolic engineering.”
“Take, for example, what happens to polymers during deformation: it is the changes and interactions at the scale of the polymer chains that lead to the material’s overall behaviour,” says Professor Stephen Hall, a Lund University Professor of Solid Mechanics. “Understanding the properties of materials from their relevant microstructural scales under different conditions is essential for reliable packaging solutions, as it is these properties that affect the package’s ability to protect the food inside it.”
X-ray technology helps us understand when materials break down
Critical issues like understanding the relationship between water penetration and deformation in paper materials – which is necessary for developing paper-based packaging that is both durable and recyclable – hinge on what Professor Hall calls “material characterisation.” This process involves understanding the properties of materials under different conditions, to assess the material's suitability for specific applications.
This is where advanced experimental techniques such as X-ray tomography and X-ray scattering come into play. Essentially enabling a picture of an object or material’s internal structure to be formed from the atomic level to the scale of the product, these are some of the primary techniques being used by experts at Max IV, a Lund University-hosted research facility.
“The first step in this process is to measure the structure of materials, like carton and plastic, at the atomic, molecular, and microstructural scales using these X-ray techniques,” Professor Hall explains. “Then we subject the material to, for example, heat, moisture, or other environmental conditions, to observe when and how they change, deform, or break down.”
Analysing data with artificial intelligence
In order to support and utilise the knowledge being generated in globally renowned research institutions and actually put it into practice, Tetra Pak has initiated a collaboration with Lund University.
For one of the first projects in this partnership, researchers used artificial intelligence to analyse data from X-ray scattering. This analysis provides valuable insights into the structure and behaviour of materials, like wood fibres and polymers, under conditions such as load cases and material changes.
“Using X-ray techniques, we can actually observe the packaging material’s molecules and see when they break down, dissolve, or deform.”
Scientists use this information to determine the materials' resilience, which is one of the most important characteristics when it comes to food-packaging safety. Once the physics of the materials are captured more accurately, model builders can use that information to develop models about the material’s behaviour, which is crucial in making informed decisions about material development for packaging.
Research that could offer benefits far beyond packaging
Collaborations like this don’t just have the potential to change the packaging industry; the implications could extend far beyond it. The development of fully renewable and recyclable materials has the potential to set new standards across multiple sectors, from consumer goods to healthcare.
“We want to use materials that can be sourced from renewable resources and easily recycled at the end of their life cycle, but that’s only one part of our overarching goal,” says Joakim. “The challenge is not just to create sustainable packaging, but to redefine the entire lifecycle of packaging materials.”
“The development of fully renewable and recyclable materials has the potential to set new standards across multiple sectors, from consumer goods to healthcare.”
The knowledge gained from these studies could potentially also accelerate the transition to a circular economy. Such advancements could create a ripple effect, reshaping consumer expectations to require companies to improve the sustainability of their operations and products, and ultimately influencing regulatory policies to align with what’s best for both human health and the planet.
If you want to learn more about the science of developing packaging materials, read our piece on food packaging safety. See how our experts work to ensure more sustainable packaging doesn’t come at the cost of food safety.
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1 A carton package made of renewable or recycled materials, which are responsibly sourced, therefore helping protect and restore our planet’s climate, resources and biodiversity; contributing towards low carbon production and distribution; convenient and safe, therefore helping to enable a resilient food system; fully recyclable.