Perpetual Plastic for Food to Go (PPFTG)

This innovative multi-disciplinary project will develop, prototype, and evaluate a novel circular business model that combines smart-technology enabled products and services to reduce the environmental, societal, and economic impact of Food-to-go packaging.

Food-to-go (FTG), fresh and chilled foods such as sandwiches and prepared salads sold by food retailers for consumption out of the home, is a growing UK market driven by the rise in convenience lifestyles. The FTG industry at present yields a significant amount of single-use packaging waste which is detrimental to our planet, but also represents substantial resource value loss. Driven by traditional business models that operate on a 'take-make-dispose' economic system, efforts to transform the FTG industry to a more circular economic system (the Circular Economy (CE)), one in which plastic packaging is no longer single-use and resource value is retained within a loop, have been limited. This is partly due to the lack of historic cooperation across the supply chain to define and address the problem; the complexity of transitioning multiple industry and consumer stakeholders to a new circular approach; and the lack of understanding of consumer behaviour.

Recognising that no one single approach will overcome the identified problems, we bring together academics with expertise in sustainable design, sustainable manufacturing, and polymer chemistry with project partners that represent the interests of all operators and stages within the FTG supply chain; from manufacturer through to retailer. Together, we will use a combined approach of novel smart technologies and quality assurance methods, in-depth understanding and modelling of consumer behaviour, and comprehensive supply chain value assessment to propose a novel future FTG Circular Product-Service System (CPSS).

Specifically, the project will: (i) develop and validate novel combinations of 'track and trace' smart sensors, tracking, end of life detection technologies, and robust quality control systems to support the design and development of new FTG CPSS concepts that could maximise the lifetime of plastic packaging, enhance resource management, and reduce premature waste disposal; (ii) define how 'value' is prioritised, moved, and maintained within existing FTG supply chains so to develop new tools and methods for determining the necessary supply-side value movements and flows within new FTG CPSS concepts; (iii) seek to understand current consumer behaviours with existing FTG packaging in order to propose new tools and methods that enable and evaluate meaningful behaviour change towards less resource intense and environmentally destructive demand-side action; (iv) take a structured co-design approach that partners academic research with industry experience to create, based on the findings above, and evaluate, through live proof-of-concept prototype trials, a novel FTG CPSS that will improve the environmental, societal, and economic impact of FTG packaging.

The project will be as far as possible 'open source' through academic publication, industry networking, and a vibrant digital social media presence to help foster the UK and international transition to CE, disseminating and translating project outputs to both academia and industry. Outputs will include: Track and trace, cleaning, and detection technology concepts with feasibility/stability studies and design implications; supply chain value indicators and datasets, resource and value flow models, and evaluation tools; consumer behaviour baseline dataset and modelling tools, with personas and scenarios of use; and a novel FTG CPSS concept with validated proof-of-concept packaging prototypes, and business/service modelling and blueprints. We will also produce a toolkit for policymakers which will synthesise the generated tools, methods, and case study examples to both underline and reinforce our impact and the national importance of our findings.