UN Goal #2 – Zero Hunger
The UN estimates that 800 million people worldwide suffer from hunger.[1]
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Plastic products reduce spoilage and wastage in the food production and distribution system, allowing more food to be delivered from farm to fridge. Agricultural and wider food supply chains influence how much and what form of plastic packaging is used, as well as other factors such as the potential spreading of germs via selling produce loose.[2]
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In most cases the environmental case for plastics is poorly made but research shows that substituting plastics with alternative materials can result in significantly damaging environmental impacts.[3]
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Plastic products are vital to relieving hunger as well as improving and changing the global food system. The industry creates ‘enabling products’ to improve yields, improve harvesting practices, reduce food waste and deliver more and better quality food around the world.
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Plastic packaging maintains food quality, safety and protects food from becoming waste. If food waste were a country it would be the third largest emitter of greenhouse gases. [4] In order to achieve zero hunger, food production needs to increase to keep pace with demographic change but it needs to do so in a sustainable way.
Plastic Contributes To Food Waste Reduction
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The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization predicts that about 1.3 billion tons of food per year are either wasted or lost. A reduction in these losses would increase the amount of food available for human consumption and enhance global food security. Crop production contributes a significant proportion of typical incomes in certain regions of the world, for example in Sub-Saharan Africa and reducing food loss can directly increase the real incomes of crop producers. [5]
The Purdue Improved Crop Storage (PICS) project enables small holder farmers in developing countries to preserve dry crops after harvest with minimal losses. Through projects such as the PICS, low-resource farmers get access to durable plastic bags to store grains after harvest, allowing farmers to have a supply of clean grain for consumption or sale for a longer time after harvest. [6]
For extending the life and preserving the quality of cereal grains, seeds and rice, solutions such as woven polypropylene bags are low cost and very effective to control insect grain pests and to provide hermetic storage. [7]
[1] https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/11-09-2018-global-hunger-continues-to-rise---new-un-report-says
[2] https://phys.org/news/2019-06-plastic-packaging-food-environment.html
[3] https://plastics.americanchemistry.com/Plastics-and-Sustainability.pdf
[4] http://www.fao.org/3/a-bb144e.pdf
[6] https://picsnetwork.org/who-we-are/
[7]http://www.knowledgebank.irri.org/step-by-step-production/postharvest/storage/grain-storage-systems/hermetic-storage-systems/irri-super-bag
