Our Research
Food waste presents a substantial concern around the world, as a significant portion of all farmed produce never gets eaten even though it's been bought. Within the United States, 35-50% of fresh produce is wasted, and the majority of this waste occurs after the fruits and vegetables are sold (source needed). In 2010 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that 34 million tons of food were wasted that year, making up about 14% of the total solid municipal waste. Currently the world’s resources are being depleted at a rapid rate, which means smart and innovative technologies need to be implemented to help solve the problem. The level of food waste in the U.S. and countries all over the world needs to be reduced dramatically so that there’s enough food for everyone. Farming and producing food requires a significant amount of time and energy, along with other materials. These resources come in limited quantity, outlining the detrimental impact of food waste because it is wasteful to not fully utilize the food that’s been produced. A 2012 study asked participating families about their levels of food waste and found that 20-25% of the families’ food waste could be attributed to packaging. Presently, most packaging products are sent to landfills, and waste from packaging was totaled to be 29.5% of the municipal solid waste in the United States in 2009. This details the need for better packaging that won’t contribute to the high levels of waste produced by current packaging.
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A major cause of food spoilage are fungi that degrade, ferment, and acidify the produce, thus making it inedible. Using polymers in packaging can help increase the shelf-life of products. Current biopolymers provide promise in reducing plastic waste, but still have limitations that have prevented their widespread adoption due to reduced shelf life of biopolymer-packaged foods. Biopolymers currently are limited at withstanding environmental forces, like temperature, and provide poor protection for food. Poor packaging, along with misconceptions among the general public, have been the leading reasons for the high levels of food waste.
As an approach to this problem, many packaging companies search for polymers that suit the needs of specific foods better to avoid food degradation. Currently, most packaging falls under one of the following categories: plastic, paper/cardboard, metal, or glass [5]. Each type of packaging serves a specific role based on the process of degradation in a given food.
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Our current aim is to reduce food waste through the development or improvement of food packaging techniques.
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