CSAOSZ conference: reducing food loss via sustainable packaging

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2024/6-7

Dr Olga Felkai Beáta, deputy state secretary for food industry and trade policy of the Ministry of Agriculture opened the event. She stressed that reducing food waste and thus unnecessary environmental impact is an important part of the government’s programme. She highlighted FAO’s food security and nutrition guidelines and placed particular emphasis on the Farm to Fork (2020) strategy of the European Union.

Dr. Beáta Olga Felkai, deputy state secretaryof the Ministry of Agriculture highlighted FAO’s food security and nutrition guidelines

Aleksa Mirkovic from the United Nations Industrial Development Organisation (UNIDO) spoke about the Save Food initiative, which has now become a global programme, its educational and awareness-raising context, and gave participants an insight into the details of the cooperation with the World Packaging Organisation (WPO) in this domain.

 

Dr. Gyula Kasza, head of the risk prevention and education department at NÉBIH gave a presentation on food waste related experiences in Hungary

Benefits of the right packaging

Nerida Kelton stepped on the podium once again to showcase the best examples of innovative and intuitive packaging techniques that contribute to reducing food waste. She brought case studies on the effective use of packaging technology, including hermetically sealed bags for storing corn in Kenya and time-temperature indicators helping to monitor food freshness.

The last speaker in the morning section of the conference was Miklós Nagy, technical secretary of CSAOSZ, who shared his thoughts on identified food loss sources and packaging solutions. He underlined that packaging has a big impact on the shelf life of food. According to a study, packaged broccoli stays fresh for 36 days, while unpackaged broccoli remains fresh for only 15 days. There is another benefit of packaging: lower CO2 emissions.

Miklós Nagy, technical secretary of CSAOSZ shared his thoughts on identified food loss sources and packaging solutions

Innovative solutions

Following a lunch break and presenting CSAOSZ’s “For the Trade” and “For Progress in the Packaging Industry” awards, GS1 Hungary Nonprofit Zrt.’s CEO Dávid Kétszeri talked about the role of GS1 standards in preventing food loss. He explained that GS1 standards are used to scan 10 billion barcodes every day, more than 2 billion products have GS1 barcodes and more than 2 million companies use the standards.

Mónika Hindiné Ódor, managing director of Starfol Plusz Kft. spoke to conference participants about the role of mono-material sustainable packaging, and the role of these materials in the vacuum and modified atmosphere packaging of food products. The next speaker was Károly Orbán, chairman of the board of CODEX Zrt., who gave participants an insight into single- and multilayer labels.

In a maze of rules

At the end of the conference, Beáta Gönci from CSAOSZ and Katalin Kecskés from GS1 reviewed the new environmental regulations affecting domestic packaging, with a special focus on the environmental protection product fee (EPF), extended producer responsibility (EPR), the deposit refund scheme (DRS) and single-use plastics (SUP). The joint presentation also covered the topic of GTIN identification and the EAN-13 barcode, which are very important in identifying and tracking products in the drink container return system. //