Cited by 185Food Waste Reduction and SustainabilityConsumer Packaging Perceptions and TrendsAgriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 71 of the 73 references it cites were found in a registry or an index; none of the 114 sources its claims cite is checked for support yet.

Packaging-Related Food Losses and Waste: An Overview of Drivers and Issues

Open access

Abstract

Packaging is often criticized as a symbol of today’s throwaway society, as it is mostly made of plastic, which is in itself quite controversial, and is usually used only once. However, as packaging’s main function is to protect its content and 30% of all food produced worldwide is lost or wasted along the supply chain, optimized packaging may be one of the solutions to reduce this staggering amount. Developing countries struggle with losses in the supply chain before food reaches the consumer. Here, appropriate packaging may help to protect food and prolong its shelf life so that it safely reaches these households. In developed countries, food tends to be wasted rather at the household’s level due to wasteful behavior. There, packaging may be one of the drivers due to inappropriate packaging sizes and packaging that is difficult to empty. When discussing the sustainability of packaging, its protective function is often neglected and only revolves around the type and amount of material used for production. In this review, drivers, issues, and implications of packaging-related food losses and waste (FLW) are discussed, as well as the implication for the implementation in life cycle assessments (LCA).

Overview

AI snapshot

Written from the paper’s full text.

TL;DR

This review argues that packaging’s protective function is often neglected in sustainability debates and that appropriate packaging may help reduce food loss and waste (FLW), especially in developing supply chains. However, packaging-related FLW (PFLW) is poorly quantified and rarely integrated into life cycle assessments (LCA), so better data and methods are needed.

Key findings

  • Around 30% of food produced worldwide is lost or wasted; FAO estimates about 1.3 billion metric tons annually, with industrialized regions wasting more at consumption and developing regions losing more between production and retail.
  • PFLW is significant but scarcely quantified: a Swedish household survey estimated PFLW contributes 20%–25% of household food waste, and poor emptiability led to approximately 4% of total FLW in surveyed households.
  • Packaging can reduce FLW through mechanical protection, barrier properties, modified atmosphere packaging, and active/intelligent packaging, but inappropriate packaging size, difficult opening/emptying, poor stackability, and packaging failures can also cause FLW.
  • Packaging usually accounts for only 1%–12% (typically around 5%) of greenhouse gas emissions in a food-packaging LCA, so FLW prevention may often be more environmentally important than packaging material reduction; 64% of EU consumers misinterpret the “best before” date.

Methods

  • Narrative review with literature searches in ScienceDirect using keywords “food waste,” “food waste” AND “packaging,” and additional “LCA”; peer-reviewed articles were preferred, with FAO and WRAP reports also included.
  • The review identified 88 suitable references plus 17 additional references for framing, and synthesizes packaging functions, supply-chain and consumer drivers of PFLW, and approaches to integrate PFLW into LCA.
  • LCA integration approaches discussed include using 1 kg consumed food as a functional unit, calculating break-even rates, expert-opinion scenarios, and function-based ex-ante LCA.

Limitations

  • Stated: there is no reliable data on quantities of PFLW; quantification is difficult via household surveys (social desirability, forgetfulness) and waste composition analyses (limited food-category detail, missing alternative disposal routes, no cause information).
  • Stated: there is a lack of LCA studies integrating PFLW, no standardized definition of food waste, no direct relationship between longer shelf life and less FLW, and little empirical evidence on how much consumers waste due to packaging size or apportionment.
  • Evident: the review is not systematic, relies on ScienceDirect and selected reports, and several conclusions rest on correlations from industry/NGO reports (e.g., AMERIPEN, Unwrapped) rather than causal evidence.

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Integrity signals

Registry

Crossref · 10.3390/su11010264

Cites

71 of 71 references verified0 citation errors · 0 not checkable

Statistics

Nothing to recompute.

Verification

Claims the paper makes

0 of 114 cited sources checked · 0 supported · 0 flagged

Show all 72 claims

  • Probably not a substantial claim. 15
  • It may state two separate claims as one. 29
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Claims other papers make about this one

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Self-check

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Each contradiction between two passages listed here was confirmed by an independent check.

  • RecyClass is assigned to the wrong reference

    Minor

    The text cites reference [72] as Plastics Recyclers Europe's RecyClass tool, but reference [72] is a different article. The RecyClass entry is numbered [73] in the reference list.

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Citations

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Items 101–185 of 185

Metadata

Authors
Wohner, B., Pauer, E., Heinrich, V., & Tacker, M.
Affiliations
Hochschule Campus Wien (AT)
Corresponding author
Wohner, Bernhard
Venue
Sustainability
Publisher
MDPI AG
Published
2019-01-07
Volume
11
Issue
1
Pages
264
ISSN
2071-1050 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2908209806
Cited by
185
References
73
Citations by year
2026: 22 · 2025: 19 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 28 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 32 · 2020: 19 · 2019: 5
FWCI
15.83
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Locations
  • Sustainability (publishedVersion, cc-by)
  • RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
  • DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion, cc-by-sa)
Topics
  • Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Food Waste Reduction and Sustainability
  • Social Sciences › Business, Management and Accounting › Marketing › Consumer Packaging Perceptions and Trends
  • Physical Sciences › Environmental Science › Ecology › Agriculture Sustainability and Environmental Impact
Keywords
food loss and waste, packaging, food packaging, plastic packaging, food shelf life, household food waste, packaging size, sustainable packaging, life cycle assessment, food protection

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Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.

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