Packaging shelf-life and potential food waste can influence the environmental impact of food products: the case of red beef

Food packaging has been seen for a long time as an additional environmental cost within a packaged
food life cycle. Packaging manufacturing and waste are widely believed to have a significant impact
on the overall environmental performance of packaged food items. (Gallucci et al., 2021; Sazdovski
et al., 2021). Recent scientific studies, on the other hand, have shown that food packaging has a
favorable impact on the overall environmental profile of food packaging systems. This is attributable
to the intrinsic qualities of packaging materials and solutions, such as those that might avoid and
minimize food waste probability (Verghese et al., 2015; Wikström et al., 2018). For these reasons,
packaging effective eco-design is a point of major concern in actual strategies towards environmental
sustainability of food-packaging systems (Pauer et al., 2019). A well eco-designed system should
balance waste reduction, both in terms of packaging and food, and preservative performance
efficiency (Coffigniez et al., 2021; Verghese et al., 2015). Wohner et al. (2019) and Gutierrez et al.
(2017) studied the role of shelf-life in reducing potential food waste and, consequently, the overall
environmental impacts of the food-packaging system. Numerous food packaging materials, solutions,
and systems are currently available on the market and characterized by different material
compositions, properties, and characteristics that lead to different expected shelf-lives and eventually
different potential food waste reductions (Gogliettino et al., 2020; Sumrin et al., 2021). In this
scenario, the search for the best eco-designed solution is hard to achieve.