Issue 9, 2024

Sustainable biodegradable coatings for food packaging: challenges and opportunities

Abstract

This review article provides a thorough overview of barrier coating materials that have been used in food packaging with a focus on biodegradable (bio-based or petroleum-based) materials, such as lipids, proteins, polysaccharides, agriculture waste and polyesters. The goal is to provide an opportunity to acknowledge progress made in this field, focusing on modifications made to coatings. These modifications aim to address the shortcomings of biodegradable substrates (either plastic or paper) and improve their performance, enabling them to compete with traditional petroleum-based food packaging materials. This includes their barrier against water vapor and oxygen, mechanical and surface characteristics (sealability and adhesion), as well as antimicrobial properties. The barrier of most biodegradable polymers underperforms in comparison with petroleum-based non-biodegradable polymers, which possess either high water vapor barrier or high oxygen barrier. Coating technology is a promising solution particularly in barrier improvement of biodegradable polymers. Currently, there are only metallized, or inorganic nanosheet coatings available for biodegradable films that meet food packaging requirements. There are some challenges in this field, for example, being able to retain the coating's biodegradability despite applied modifications to improve it's performance, the large-scale fabrication of biodegradable coatings, the coating's delamination and heat-sealability during service time, and the migration of the coating into the packaged food. Moreover, green chemistry and its sustainability needs in biodegradable polymeric coatings are also discussed regarding new ideas and possible directions for widespread application of coatings in food packaging. This is the first review that specifically summarizes biodegradable coatings on plastic and paper substrates with a focus on coating modifications to improve the performance of the base substrate to meet the required properties for food packaging applications.

Graphical abstract: Sustainable biodegradable coatings for food packaging: challenges and opportunities

Article information

Article type
Critical Review
Submitted
19 Jul 2023
Accepted
22 Jan 2024
First published
05 Apr 2024
This article is Open Access
Creative Commons BY-NC license

Green Chem., 2024,26, 4934-4974

Sustainable biodegradable coatings for food packaging: challenges and opportunities

F. Jahangiri, A. K. Mohanty and M. Misra, Green Chem., 2024, 26, 4934 DOI: 10.1039/D3GC02647G

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