Environmental Sustainability, Food Quality and Convertibility of Bio-Based Barrier Coatings for Fibre-Based Food Packaging: A Semisystematic Review

Summary

The ongoing legislative drive to reduce plastic consumption and promote the circularity of materials in Europe is reshaping foodpackaging market dynamics and making sustainability a key competitive factor in the sector. Legislation accelerates researchand innovation in bio-based, biodegradable and recyclable alternatives and motivates the industry to adopt sustainable designswhile enhancing compliance with environmental standards. Renewable and natural resource-based materials, such as polysac-charides, nanocellulose, lignin, lipids, phenolic compounds and proteins, have been extensively investigated in the last decade.Their use in dispersion coatings and biopolymer compounds for paper and paperboard barriers is often referred to as a sustain-able packaging solution. This semisystematic review compiled available quantitative and qualitative data on the environmentalsustainability, food quality and convertibility of novel bio-based barrier coatings for food packaging. The results highlight aresearch gap in assessing environmental performance and the overuse of the term ‘sustainable’ and ‘biodegradable’. However,convertibility and film formability issues remain major obstacles that must be overcome before the scaling up of production ofsuch coatings. Although bio-based coatings demonstrate potential to extend the shelf life of certain fruits and mushrooms com-pared with uncoated paper or paperboard, numerous studies lack direct comparisons with conventional packaging methods.Further exploration of these aspects will facilitate science- and data-driven innovation and decision-making in industry, policyand academia in the development of sustainable bio-based packaging