Health
Glass packaging that looks after what matters
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Packaging plays an essential role in protecting food and maintaining its quality.
- Glass is highly inert and helps preserve what is inside with very little interaction between the container and its contents.
- These properties remain unchanged when glass is recycled.
- For food and drink, glass offers a reliable combination of protection, safety and durability.
Food packaging, part of everyday life
Unless you grow and make all your food yourself, you probably rely on food packaging every day.
Why? Because food, drinks and many other products need an effective barrier to protect them and help them last.
Manufacturers and businesses use packaging to preserve the safety and quality of food and beverages, as well as a wide range of health and beauty products.
One package,
many possibilities
Packaging comes in many shapes, sizes and materials. The right choice depends on how a product travels through the supply chain, the information it needs to communicate to consumers and how a brand wants to position it on the shelf.
What does packaging have to do with my health?
When we talk about food packaging, we are also talking about food contact materials, often referred to as FCMs.
These are the materials designed to come into direct contact with food or drink. They play an important role in maintaining product quality and meeting food safety requirements designed to protect public health.
So what surrounds our food matters too.
Source: Food Packaging Forum, Food Contact Chemicals Database – Explore the scientific resource
Chemicals in packaging?
Research published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition identified close to 3,000 chemicals that had been detected as migrating or extractable from different food contact materials.
The study highlights an important point: understanding what can migrate from packaging into food is part of assessing the safety of food contact materials.
Source: Geueke et al., Systematic evidence on migrating and extractable food contact chemicals: Most chemicals detected in food contact materials are not listed for use, Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, 2022 – Read the scientific paper
Glass, a healthy packaging choice
Glass provides a protective barrier for the food and drinks we enjoy without requiring an added lining in the body of the container.
Jams, pickles, honey and other products that need reliable storage over time are familiar examples of foods commonly packed in glass jars.
Glass creates an effective barrier between a product and the outside environment, helping to preserve food quality.
Research into food contact materials has also found very few problematic migrants originating from glass itself. Its composition and barrier properties make it particularly well suited to products where maintaining quality and limiting interaction with the packaging matter.
Source: Dieter Schrenk, Literature Report on Food Packaging Materials and Their Potential Impact on Human Health, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, 2014 – Read the scientific report
Recycled glass stays true to itself
Glass keeps its fundamental properties when it is recycled.
Glass keeps its fundamental properties when it is recycled.
You may already know that glass can be recycled again and again. What matters from a health perspective is that using recycled glass to make a new container does not change the inert nature of the material.
A bottle made with recycled glass still provides the same glass barrier between the product and its packaging.
Why?
Because new bottles and jars can be made using both raw materials and recycled glass. Once melted and formed into a new container, the glass remains chemically highly inert.
Its essential material properties remain the same, cycle after cycle.
Source: Dieter Schrenk, Literature Report on Food Packaging Materials and Their Potential Impact on Human Health, Technische Universität Kaiserslautern, 2014 – Read the scientific report
Glass, made
for circularity
Glass can take on many new lives through recycling while maintaining the qualities that make it suitable for food contact.
It is made using raw materials including sand, soda ash and limestone. Recycled glass, known as cullet, can also be added during production to make new bottles and jars.
Together, these ingredients form a single-layer material capable of protecting a wide range of products, from delicately flavoured foods to sensitive medicines.
“Choose glass. Choose health and food safety.”
Health and product safety are important considerations when people think about packaging.
Research commissioned by FEVE among more than 4,000 consumers across 13 European countries found that nearly 8 in 10 see glass as a packaging material fit for the future. The same research found strong consumer confidence in the ability of recycled glass to continue protecting food and drinks.
Source: FEVE / InSites Consulting, Consumers recognise glass packaging as safe, sustainable and fit for the future material, 2022 – Discover the consumer research
Now it’s up to you!
One of the qualities behind that confidence is glass’s inertness. It provides a reliable barrier while keeping interaction between the packaging and its contents to a minimum.
So next time you are at the supermarket, take a moment to look at the packaging too. Choosing glass means choosing a material designed to protect what is inside and preserve the qualities of the products you bring home.
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