What is the most environmentally friendly food packaging?

Are you searching for sustainable options for food packaging? Join us in our business-to-business blog as we unravel the most environmentally friendly food packaging choices available today. Discover how you can meet consumer demands for eco-conscious solutions while maintaining the integrity and freshness of your products.

We all want to do our part to save the planet, but we also need to eat. And while it may seem like take away packaging and food packaging are bad for the environment, there are actually a lot of ways to use eco-friendly packaging, sustainable food boxes, and other biodegradable packaging.

Yes, sustainable food packaging solutions are available if you know where to look.
So what is the most environmentally friendly food packaging? You might be surprised to know that it's not a biodegradable product at all, but glass. Glass has been called the most sustainable food packaging material because it doesn't use a lot of waste to create-no plastics or resins are used in making glass-and it is very reusable and recyclable.

But that doesn't solve our problem, which is: what are the best types of packaging for food-fast food, take away food?

Well, we know three things that it isn't. Single-use plastics are the number one food packaging container with the biggest negative environmental impact. This includes everything from straws to plastic bottles to styrofoam cups to plastic bags. Each of these things is very bad for the environment, almost impossible to recycle, and can't (or, at least, won't) be reused.

The next biggest offender are plastics with BPA, or Bisphenol-A. This is a food packaging material that is not only not biodegradable packaging, but it is actively bad for your health, leading to infertility, PCOS, and other metabolic disorders.

Finally, the last worst is plastic takeaway packaging.

So what are the good alternatives?

There are a lot of great alternatives-some truly amazing-to sustainable fast food packaging, but many of them are hard to bring to scale. This includes things like rice paper and bamboo. Perhaps one day the packaging industry will reach a point where all of our takeaway food can come in these extremely eco-friendly take away containers, but for now, we'll have to do with the next best thing: paper and cardboard.

Paper and cardboard packaging make tremendous sustainable take away food packaging materials. They are easy to make, from renewable resources. (There are a great many sustainable forestry operations which make paper from trees that they planted when they cut down the last trees, making it an endlessly renewable resource.) They are manufactured with little waste or byproducts: paper and cardboard need a lot of water to produce, but they don't waste or contaminate the water, making them very eco-friendly.

And, paper and cardboard can be recycled over and over again. The same take away container that you use to get noodles will one day be recycled into packaging for a hamburger, and later into a box for Chinese food. This is the circular economy, the life cycle of renewable packaging alternatives.

What is PACKQUEEN doing to improve our sustainability footprint?

PACKQUEEN has partnered with One Tree Planted, a non-profit organization focused on global reforestation. For every order placed on our website, we will donate one tree to be planted in one of the organization's numerous reforestation sites in Australia.
As a company, we have been dedicated to providing sustainable packaging options since Day 1. Our products are made from 80%-100% recycled materials, while the remaining 20% are made from sustainably sourced wood pulp. We have always been committed to responsible forestry.

Through this partnership, PACKQUEEN aims to meet the following objectives:

• Support global reforestation
• Empower customers with sustainable actions
• Raise awareness about ecosystem restoration

Learn more about our partnership with One Tree Planted and join us in committing to saving our planet's forests.

We recognize that we are producing a lot of products that people will use one time and then dispose of. It is our hope that by creating custom packaging from sources along the supply chain that don't pollute the environment and add to our carbon footprint, as well as making our products fully recyclable, we are doing some good in the fight for a better future.

You'll find in our packaging offerings a huge number of paper boxes, paper bags, cardboard tubes, boxes, and take away containers.

We hope that when you go to get take away for lunch or dinner, you ask the restaurant not to use Styrofoam or plastic, but to use paper or cardboard. And, it's our further hope that you take that home with you in a reusable tote or bag, not in a plastic bag.

Together, we can make big things happen.

View our selection of Food Packaging options at Pack Queen and order online today!