OUR PACKAGING, A SUSTAINABILITY CHALLENGE

Those of us who live with the sea know how essential it is to protect the environment and think about the future already in the present.

That is why we are working to improve our packaging more and more, with an ambitious sustainability target: to achieve a 90% recyclability rate by 2025. For vacuum-packed products and those that are stored at the refrigerated counter, this is a very high percentage.

Where do we stand

Within a few months of Fumara’s inception, we began using FSC-certified paper from responsibly managed sources. The recyclability level rose from B to A (+10%) in 2021.

The next step will be the use of specific films for vacuum-packing: the future will see us using recyclable films with percentages ranging from 73% to 79%, and already from the first tests we can confirm that the transition will not affect product safety.

How is the recyclability percentage calculated?

The % recyclability of our packaging was calculated using the following criteria

• Packaging that has infrastructures across the country that can completely recycle it by making second-life plastic granules and that allows it to achieve Zero Waste: 100% recyclability.
• For packaging destined for waste-to-energy where no material recovery takes place: 0% recyclability.
• For all packaging where only a fraction of the material is recovered, the percentage by weight on the sales unit that will be sent for mechanical recycling according to UNI EN 13430:2005 will be considered.

What does sustainable packaging mean?

It means packaging that is:

1. Designed with the management of non-renewable raw materials in mind,
2. Produced by optimised processes with regard to resource utilisation and emissions,
3. Valorised at the end of its life so that it can be turned into a new resource.

Packaging is defined as recyclable when it can be removed from the undifferentiated waste stream (Plasmi in Italy) to be collected, processed and transformed into secondary raw material.

Why not use compostable material?

At the moment, there are no solutions that can guarantee the same functional performance as the materials in use at Foodlab, but we are monitoring both the development of biobased materials in order to start experiments and possible replacements, and the implementation of collection systems dedicated to organic recycling, since currently many packages made of biodegradable and compostable materials risk being sent to waste-to-energy anyway.

Many plants are in fact only organised to handle food waste operationally and not packaging waste.