Food Packaging in the Circular Economy: A System-Level Review of Sustainability, Food Safety and Consumer Behaviour.

Abstract

Food packaging is a basic but important part of the modern food system. It protects food from physical, chemical and microbiological hazards, makes storage and transport easier, helps maintain shelf life, provides product information and offers convenience to consumers. At the same time, the largely linear way in which packaging is produced, used and discarded has increased the use of virgin resources and contributed to packaging waste, pollution and challenges in managing materials that are often used for only a short time. The circular economy (CE) offers a different way of thinking about this system, with greater emphasis on resource efficiency, waste prevention, reuse, recovery and keeping products and materials in use for as long as practical. For food packaging, however, circularity cannot be judged simply by whether a package is recyclable, reusable, biodegradable or made from renewable resources. The package must still protect the food, meet food-contact safety requirements, keep environmental burdens as low as possible, be economically workable and fit the collection and waste-management systems available to consumers.

This critical review brings together evidence on circular food packaging across environmental sustainability, food safety, chemical migration, consumer behaviour, life-cycle assessment (LCA), reuse, recycling, composting, extended producer responsibility (EPR), technological innovation and policy. It builds on the authors’ original assessment of 74 scientific papers retrieved from Scopus and examined through content-based analysis, while relevant recent literature has been added in the revised version to update and strengthen the discussion. Overall, the evidence does not point to one packaging material or circular strategy that is best in every situation. Environmental performance depends on factors such as the function the package must perform, the amount and type of material used, production processes, transport, the number of reuse cycles, washing, collection efficiency, recycling yield and the final treatment route. A package that uses less material, for example, may not deliver an overall benefit if it also leads to more food loss.

Food safety adds another important layer to the discussion. Circular systems can raise questions about chemical migration, contamination, material degradation, the safety of recycled content and the control of substances of concern. Circularity, in other words, should not be assumed to mean either safety or sustainability. Consumer behaviour matters just as much: purchasing, reuse, return, cleaning, sorting and disposal practices all influence whether a circular system works in everyday use. Recent research also suggests that what consumers perceive as sustainable does not always match the actual environmental performance of a package.

Taken together, the review treats food packaging circularity as a socio-technical system that includes packaging design and food preservation, materials and manufacturing, logistics, consumers, collection and recycling infrastructure, business models and regulation. Future research would benefit from moving beyond simple material substitution and stand-alone studies of consumer attitudes towards more integrated assessments that combine LCA, food-waste effects, chemical-safety assessment, behavioural evidence and performance in real operating conditions.