NxtBarr: Neste generasjon matvaremballasje, trefiberbasert emballasje med biobaserte barrierer mot vann, fett og oksygen

UN sustainability goal #12 states that we need to make fundamental changes in the way our societies produce and consume goods, among other by substantially reducing waste generation through prevention, reduction, recycling and reuse. The primary packaging of water rich food and liquids today is often plastic materials, ensuring a good water barrier in direct contact with the food. Even fibre-based packaging has a film of e.g., polyethylene to obtain water barrier and it is reported that the packaging sector generates more than 100 million tons plastic waste per year. Alarming reports about how microplastic and plastic additives can affect human health, and the fact that recycling rates are currently much higher for paper than plastic, motivates a change to other materials as primary food packaging. In the last years, driven by the single use plastic (SUP) directive, an increasing number of fibre-based products have reached the market. The vision of the NxtBarr project is to develop fully biobased, recyclable, and biodegradable packaging materials that can replace plastic without compromising on food safety or lead to more food waste. While cellulosic materials have good barriers against oxygen and grease, they are natively hydrophilic and barrier against liquid water is therefore a large challenge with biobased packaging materials. The NxtBarr project will take on the challenging task of developing new sustainable barrier concepts for fibre-based food packaging based on biopolymers using novel approaches to obtain hydrophobic and dense (low porosity) surfaces.

A strong interdisciplinary consortium with scientists having complementary background from synthesis, (nano)cellulose, biopolymer chemistry, fiber technology, packaging performance, food safety, and sustainability, together with industry partners representing both the pulp, paper and packaging industry, and food processing industry have joined forces to reach these ambitious goals.

Dette prosjektet administreres av Forskningsrådet. Les mer om prosjektet i Prosjektbanken.