Embracing packaging which cleans itself

Have you ever con­sid­ered how many peo­ple have han­dled a bag of sal­ad or pack­et of pas­ta before it has made its way onto a super­mar­ket shelf? Or how many shop­pers have picked it up and then put it back?

There’s no evi­dence to sug­gest coro­n­avirus can be passed on through touch­ing pack­ag­ing and the offi­cial stance from the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion is that pack­ag­ing is an unlike­ly trans­mis­sion route, despite the fact that the virus can sur­vive on plas­tic for up to 72 hours. Nev­er­the­less, atti­tudes and behav­iours have under­stand­ably shift­ed over the past few months.

A sur­vey con­duct­ed by FMCG Gurus, pub­lished in April, found 26 per cent of respon­dents across 18 coun­tries, includ­ing the UK, Unit­ed States and Chi­na, said they would now like more infor­ma­tion about how prod­ucts on shop shelves have been han­dled, while 42 per cent said they are pay­ing more atten­tion to the qual­i­ty of pack­ag­ing.

The pan­dem­ic has made peo­ple more anx­ious about germs and hygiene eti­quette. Super­mar­kets and shops have tak­en mea­sures to low­er the risk of COVID-19 spread­ing, includ­ing installing hand-sani­tis­ing sta­tions. But even once a vac­cine has been found and admin­is­tered, there will be shop­pers who are like­ly to remain wary about germs being passed on by touch­ing and han­dling prod­ucts.

One solu­tion to the prob­lem, and the issue of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion in the sup­ply chain in gen­er­al, could be self-clean­ing plas­tic.

Researchers at McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty in Cana­da made head­lines last Decem­ber when they announced they had devel­oped an anti-bac­te­r­i­al, non-stick plas­tic sur­face through a com­bi­na­tion of clever chem­istry and engi­neer­ing. The trans­par­ent wrap is effec­tive in repelling all forms of bac­te­ria, includ­ing super­bugs MRSA and Clostrid­i­um dif­fi­cile, as well as virus­es with a sim­i­lar struc­ture to COVID-19. It could poten­tial­ly be used to shrink-wrap all kinds of things, from door han­dles to food.

The price challenge of self-cleaning plastic

The sci­ence for self-clean­ing plas­tic is estab­lished, but it could be some time before bac­te­ria-repel­lent mate­ri­als are used to wrap prod­ucts found in super­mar­kets.

Kin­ross-based Expor­ta, a pack­ag­ing solu­tion firm, which sells an anti-bac­te­r­i­al, self-adhe­sive film that can be applied to hand rail­ings, tables and chairs, sup­plies clients in the agri­cul­ture, phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal and health­care indus­tries.

Don Mar­shall, Exporta’s head of ecom­merce and ful­fil­ment, says: “I can see the film’s appli­ca­tion on the bulk side of dis­tri­b­u­tion on plas­tic pal­lets, con­tain­ers and box­es. Sur­faces in the sup­ply chain for mov­ing goods are already hygien­ic and can be eas­i­ly sani­tised, but this would offer an extra lev­el of pro­tec­tion.

“The prob­lem with any tech­nol­o­gy, though, is that it remains expen­sive. Our film, which isn’t exact­ly self-clean­ing, costs more than £1,000 a roll. So, if self-clean­ing plas­tic was used for prod­uct pack­ag­ing, it would add a hefty amount of cost to each prod­uct and increase the price of goods, which are already price sen­si­tive.”

Indus­try analy­sis, pub­lished by Ipsos in August, has indi­cat­ed that con­sumers might be more will­ing to buy a prod­uct if the pack­ag­ing has proven hygiene qual­i­ties. How­ev­er, a bal­ance will need to be struck between hygiene, sus­tain­abil­i­ty and val­ue.

A sur­vey of 16,000 peo­ple across 16 coun­tries, con­duct­ed by the mar­ket research firm, asked what the two most impor­tant fac­tors in decid­ing between two prod­ucts of sim­i­lar qual­i­ty and fea­tures are. Near­ly five in ten said low­er price, 29 per cent vot­ed for hygien­ic pack­ag­ing and 24 per cent would pre­fer a prod­uct that came in eco-friend­ly pack­ag­ing.

Putting safety before profit

Even if bac­te­r­i­al-repel­lent mate­ri­als were to become main­stream, reluc­tance from man­u­fac­tur­ers and retail­ers could stand in self-clean­ing plastic’s way.

Stafford-based sup­pli­er of addi­tives for plas­tics and tex­tiles, Addmaster’s most inno­v­a­tive devel­op­ment is a coat­ing for packs of fresh chick­en that comes in both a liq­uid and pow­der form and helps to pre­vent the spread of bac­te­ria, such as campy­lobac­ter, a com­mon cause of food poi­son­ing.

Accord­ing to find­ings from the Food Stan­dards Agency, campy­lobac­ter is present on 5 to 7 per cent of all chick­en pack­ag­ing. Cook-in-the-bag chick­ens, which are sold as a prod­uct where con­sumers don’t have to touch raw meat, can also be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed on the out­side.

“The tech­nol­o­gy only adds 0.25p to the aver­age price of a whole chick­en, but numer­ous retail­ers and chick­en sup­pli­ers have told us that this is too much, because of the amount of the meat eat­en in the UK,” says Paul Mor­ris, Addmaster’s man­ag­ing direc­tor. “It’s tremen­dous­ly frus­trat­ing to have the solu­tion avail­able, yet be hit­ting a brick wall with retail­ers that are putting prof­it before safe­ty.”

Mor­ris is hope­ful the pan­dem­ic will mean retail­ers become more recep­tive to the tech­nol­o­gy. More shop­pers now want anti-bac­te­r­i­al pro­tec­tion and rais­ing hygiene stan­dards will help com­pa­nies increase their prof­its.

“Com­pa­nies are begin­ning to realise that if they don’t up their hygiene game, then con­sumers will move to those that do,” he adds.

Sim­i­lar hur­dles face self-clean­ing plas­tic. How­ev­er, if the price is right, then it should become com­mer­cial­ly viable.

“The devel­op­ment and roll­out of self-clean­ing plas­tic is def­i­nite­ly pos­si­ble,” says Mar­shall at Expor­ta. “Like all new tech­nolo­gies, we need to see an increase in sup­ply and demand, as well as adop­tion, for prices to drop to a point where it could be viable to have bac­te­ria-repel­lent mate­ri­als used for a pack­et of corn­flakes.”