Coatings of Bio-based materials on flexible food packaging : opportunities for problem solving and innovations

A sustainable new economy needs a marked turn in the use of raw materials and resources; if solar and wind power represent the perspective in the energy supply sector, Bio-based materials (BBM) and their composites might be the future in the field of new materials (Carus & Scholz, 2010). Every year, using different biosynthetic pathways, nature affords 170 billion of metric tons of biomass, but only a small amount (around 3.5 %), mainly represented by wood used for conventional applications, is utilized by mankind (Shen et al., 2010). The packaging sector, with food packaging by far its largest part, uses about 250 million tons of different materials and accounts for almost 500 billion dollars worldwide; about one third of that huge amount of material is made up of synthetic plastics (Piergiovanni, 2010). Therefore, the packaging sector represents a significant challenge and an excellent opportunity for reducing dependence on fossil resources and increasing the sustainability of a specific field. Anyhow, to accelerate and to make feasible the replacement of the conventional materials with Bio-based alternatives, without prompting any conflict with the packaging lines currently operating within the manufacturing companies, a valuable opportunity is represented by the use of BBM as coatings for common flexible packaging materials, with the aim of improving properties while reducing the thickness of synthetic plastic films. In this context, after a preliminary review of the existing uses and perspectives of BBM, this chapter firstly focuses on the coating technology applications in the flexible packaging field, then presents some of the experimental work carried out within our research group for the enhancement of useful performance of plastic films for food packaging, through the development of thin layers made of BBMs assembled using different procedures.