Towards Zero Plastic Packaging in Food Industry

塑料正在污染海洋，影响人类健康、野生动物和生物多样性。不幸的是，它仍然是最常用的包装食品粉末的材料，因为它在包装内保持一个合适的气氛，有利于保存食品中的营养成分，延长保质期。某些食品的高敏感性对食品业来说是一个挑战，以减少塑料在包装中的使用量。这些具有挑战性的困难需要科学和工程研究来提供一种新的材料结构和/或新的制造工艺，从而有机会停止对塑料包装的需求。该项目的目的是减少/消除使用塑料包装的需求，首先，增加保质期，从而提高食品粉末的稳定性，以咖啡为例，将使用不同的制造方法进行研究，例如通过造粒技术进行重组，其次是使用可持续的包装材料，这将减少对环境的影响。该研究计划的目的是在我们对食品粉末的制造过程、材料科学和产品特性的理解上产生一个阶段性的变化，以及这些变化如何影响随后的行为。

Plastic is polluting oceans, affecting human health, wildlife, and biodiversity. Unfortunately, it is still the most common materials used for packaging of food powders due to the fact it keeps a suitable atmosphere inside the package that is conducive to the preservation of the nutrients in the food and extends the shelf life. The high sensitivity of some types of food is challenging for the industry to reduce the plastic's amount used in packaging. These challenging difficulties requiring scientific and engineering research to deliver a new structure of the material and/or new manufacturing process which offers the opportunity to stop the need for plastic packaging.The aim of this project is to reduce/remove the need for using plastic packaging by first, increasing the shelf life and hence the stability of food powder, Coffee as an example, which will be investigated using different manufacturing approaches such as restructuring by granulation techniques and second by using sustainable packaging materials which will reduce the environmental foot print.The aim of the research program is to produce a step-change in our understanding of the manufacturing process, material science and product properties of the food powders and how this affects the subsequent behaviour.