Would it therefore be possible to have, say, meat on supermarket shelves covered only with edible packaging?
No, our packaging is only inner primary packaging. For example with a steak, you have external packaging too - so we can place some beef steak in our edible films and pack them inside a paper bag perhaps. Paper is a biodegradable material as well. In any case, we can reduce the volume of packaging because we replace the inner packaging.
What inspired you to start looking into edible films?
We worked a lot with natural polymers and we know that now there is a problem with biodegradable packaging. In April 2015, the European Parliament and European Commission created a directive about reducing the consumption of lightweight plastic carrier bags. In this directive, there are also some points about biodegradable packaging.
"Biodegradable" plastics are usually combined with natural polymers like starch - but when we call this plastic a biodegradable material, this is a mistake because only the additive is biodegradable. Over time, plastic fragments into ever-smaller particles, but these particles remain in the environment and pollute the environment.