Dr. Gail Barnes

Will the dairy industry ever see compostable packaging? Guest blogger Gail Barnes says ‘yes.’ And it’s not that far off. 

Dairy processors look to light-weighting and recyclable materials for packaging milk, yogurt, ice cream and cheese.

An integrated design approach appears to be the next frontier for the fluid milk market, where the minimum input is used to get the maximum use of materials at the end. This can only come about by the value chain working together, namely raw materials suppliers, equipment manufacturers, e.g. of blow molding equipment, distribution equipment manufacturers, e.g. of crate packing equipment, processors/brand owners and retailers.

While cost is the top factor driving the packaging industry today, sustainability concerns will dominate packaging industry work in 10 years in both Europe and North America, according to a recent study conducted by Packaging World magazine and DuPont Packaging & Industrial Polymers. Consumers also care increasingly about the environment, and they expect the products they buy to be produced in an environmentally responsible way. Milk is no exception.

In the 150th anniversary year of the first pasteurization test completed by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard, it was both a thrill and an honor to hear the GHG (greenhouse gas) calculators developed by the Innovation Center for US Dairy described as the “must-have” equipment for dairy plants.