Closing the Loop: ‘Systems Perspective’ for the Design of Food Packaging to Facilitate Material Recovery

Abstract

Most of the discarded food packaging waste is a result of complex material combination conceived during the design stage. Also, the conventional packaging designs are tough to be recovered in varying end-life situations of packaging. Most of the valuable material resource end-up into landfills in the absence of design practice to facilitate contextual waste management practice. In such circumstances, packaging design to facilitate material recovery by closed-loop recycling is a suitable approach to attain valuable resource recirculation into new forms. In this work, we propose a model for primary food packaging design to facilitate designs with material recovery provision. The model perceives the requirements of the packaging in the form of the open and closed system. The purpose here to provide a guiding framework that would facilitate the design of packaging with the provision of material re-circulation with respect to varying waste management setup(s).