FUTURE OF PACKAGING

Take a bite of your burger without removing the wrapping, or throw the wrapping away with a clear conscience. New packaging, which is broken down fast by nature or your stomach, will soon be available.

Is packaging boring? Probably, but you use it every day. It’s important, so we’re taking a look at the cutting edge of, well, packets.

Aman picks up the wrapped hamburger, which the salesperson placed on his tray. But instead of removing the white paper, he adds ketchup on top of it and takes a bite. The man is a customer frequenting the Brazilian burger restaurant of Bob’s Burgers, which has served its burgers wrapped in edible wrapping since 2012. The wrapping is based on rice flour just like the thin rice paper used for fresh spring rolls in the Vietnamese cuisine. And if customers throw away the rice paper, the material is broken down much faster than ordinary paper.

The Brazilian hamburger chain’s wrapping is not by far the only example of new types of packaging. Throughout the world, engineers are developing wrapping made of edible, water-soluble, and biodegradable materials, which can replace paper, plastic, and glass.

WASTE MOUNTAIN GROWS QUICKLY

The keen interest in new, easily perishable packaging is due to the fact that the world’s volumes of waste are steadily rising, because the food industry produces much more