Food and drink business resource efficiency

Food and drink processors can reduce their environmental impact and cut costs through packaging. However, producers must meet design conditions and manage packaging in an environmentally-acceptable way.

You should ensure make sure that your packaging is able to:

• protect, contain and preserve the product
• allow efficient manufacturing, handling and distribution methods
• provide commercial and consumer information
• present and market the product
• allow detection of tampering
• ensure safe use and handling by consumers

You must ensure your primary food packaging complies with food safety standards too.

You should carefully consider how you package and distribute your products to reduce waste. You should avoid too much packaging. However, under-packaging products can cause more waste. The entire product and its distribution costs may be wasted if it becomes damaged. Effective packaging saves you money and means less waste going to landfill.

Ensure that creating your packaging does not have an adverse effect on the environment. Try to use renewable materials and energy and keep emissions to a minimum.

When you design and manufacture your packaging you should also consider what happens to it after the product has been used. You should design your packaging to reduce environmental impacts. The end-user should be able to reuse it, recycle it, burn it for energy recovery or compost it.