Ball Packaging Europe Sponsors UN Anti-Food Wastage Initiative

Mar 12 2012 --- Ball Packaging Europe is now a sponsor of SAVE FOOD. The SAVE FOOD initiative is a joint campaign by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the trade fair organization “Messe Düsseldorf GmbH” to fight global food waste. SAVE FOOD aims to bring together business, policymakers and researchers, stimulate debate, and help develop solutions along the food value chain.

“By becoming a sponsor, Ball aims to help reduce food wastage and the associated carbon emissions”, says Martin Schäfer, an environmental scientist and Sustainability Manager at Ball Packaging Europe. “With our expertise in food and beverage packaging and in exchange with other SAVE FOOD members, we can develop ideas for the avoidance of food waste.” SAVE FOOD was launched in May 2011 with an international congress as part of interpack, the world’s leading packaging industry fair.

 

About a third of all food intended for human consumption about 1.3 billion metric tons is lost or wasted every year. Food losses and wastage adds substantially to the drain on resources, including water, soil, energy, labor and capital, and generates major quantities of greenhouse gases (about 3.8 metric tons of CO2 equivalent per ton of food) both in production and decomposition, making it a direct factor in climate change.Sustainable packaging can be one element in reducing food waste. Since beverage cans are 100 percent light- and oxygen-tight, drinks keep longer fresh in them than in any other container. This helps reduce food losses. Cans are a good choice of packaging not just for carbonated soft drinks, but also for water, juice, milk and coffee drinks.

 

Beverage cans stack outstandingly and their shape maximizes space utilization. This means a truck full of cans carries twice as much liquid on average as one loaded with bottled drinks. Due to the optimum space utilization, average carbon emissions from transportation are 57 percent lower for cans than for bottles.

 

The environmental footprint of beverage cans has improved continuously over the years. Less and less material is used in their manufacture, resulting in up to a 25 percent reduction in weight in the last 15 years. Steel and aluminum cans also have the benefit that they are fully and infinitely recyclable without any loss in quality. This makes them a permanent resource. Used beverage cans are veritable stores of energy. Recycling them saves up to 95 percent of the energy that it would take to make new metal.