“A sick yellow glow lit the interior of each pipe. Dinner,” the appetizing narration begins. “The trays and water bottles were luminous, and also edible, which meant that the orphans could eat after lights-out, saving the management a few dinars.”
Of all the action-packed, “Parasite”-battling moments in Eoin Colfer’s The Supernaturalist, the utilitarian details of this passage are the only ones that have stayed with me since childhood.
As an eight-year-old, it was the idea of edible packaging that seemed the most farfetched to me. Mysterious beings and plasma guns? Sure. There are countless books and movies about aliens and futuristic technology. But eating your dinner and then the plate too? It was novel, even revolutionary. I dreamed of chocolate chip cookie plates and Fruit Gushers the size of water bottles.
Fast forward a decade and edible packaging has become a reality. In fact, Transparency Market Research, a global company that conducts market intelligence reports, estimates that the global edible packaging market is growing at a rate of 6.90% and will be worth $1.3 billion by the end of 2024.
The timing makes sense. A cross-generational and cross-continental study released by IBM and the National Retail Federation earlier this year revealed that 70% of shoppers are willing to pay up to 35% more for sustainable purchases, with even more shoppers placing value on company transparency. Millennials and Generation Z, who make up a growing percentage of consumers, prioritize sustainability more than older generations have, according to research from the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business.
This focus on more eco-conscious behaviors is echoed in throughout the food industry with restaurants now starting to source local ingredients, offer meat-alternatives, and offer compostable takeout packaging.
Sweetgreen and Chipotle, two popular fast-casual restaurants, are among the many businesses which have doubled down on their environmental efforts.
While their packaging has been labeled as compostable for years, the bowls were treated with perfluorinated chemicals (PFCs) – dubbed as “forever chemicals.” That is, these substances cannot be broken down and contaminate soil and water, resulting in environmental build up and potential adverse health effects over time according to the EPA. As a result, Sweetgreen and Chipotle have released press statements pledging to go PFC-free by the end of 2020 and setting an example for other food chains.
However, this issue has raised the question of how environmentally friendly these efforts are. While compostable packaging sounds great on the surface, a study from Boustead Consulting & Associates, an environmental manufacturing firm, found that paper bags and compostable plastics can require up to 3.4 times more energy than conventional plastic.
In addition, there are major difficulties with turning them into compost. The reality is that many towns have not established composting programs and while individual households may have a compost bin, compostable plastics cannot be broken down in the average backyard. Thus, many compostable items still end up in a landfill and ironically have a higher environmental cost than standard plastic.
This is where edible packaging could potentially play a role. Companies such as Notpla, E6PR, Evoware, and more have created edible membranes, cups, and other forms of packaging.
But as Bruce Welt, a food-packaging researcher at the University of Florida dryly notes, “We use packaging to protect food. We don’t use food to protect food.” Especially in the time of a pandemic, imagining a future where we can eat the wrappers and dishes that our foods come in seems wildly unsanitary.
We could wrap the edible packaging in a protective layer of plastic, but this, of course, completely defeats the purpose of the packaging – not that that’s stopped companies from trying.
Perfectly Free, which launched in 2016, was one of the first companies to make commercial use of edible packaging.
Their Fruit Bites product were grape-sized drops of puree enclosed in an edible skin made possible by a collaboration with WikiCells, which was developed by Harvard Professor David Edwards.
These fruit and vegetable drops were marketed to replace sugary fruit gummies as a healthier and mess-free alternative. CEO Kevin Murphy described the product in a press statement: “five individual clear plastic bags – each containing seven fruit bites – in a gusseted resealable bag.” The company no longer seems to be in business.
Other companies which currently sell edible packaging face similar challenges. E6PR, which stands for Eco Six Pack Ring, produce “eco-rings” made of compostable matter and waste byproducts. These rings are theoretically edible and had previously been proposed to become a new bar snack in place of pretzels or peanuts. However, the company no longer encourages consumption due to contamination concerns during transport.
Though my childhood self would be somewhat disappointed that many of these edible solutions are not actually recommended to be eaten, most are still much more readily compostable and environmentally friendly than other sustainable packaging initiatives.
So, while the “rough, unleavened crispbread” trays and water bottles made of “a semirigid gum” from The Supernaturalist’s cyberpunk world haven’t quite become ubiquitous in our world yet, a future where you can eat your dinner and then your plate for dessert may not be so far off.
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