Food & Climate
The climate change is big issue and food waste is connected to it, and the processing and packaging industry is well aware about climate damage, so, it has started using less and lighter material, and this helps decreasing transport cost and emissions, an Interpack official told “Food & Climate” Platform, on the sidelines of the Food Africa exhibition held recently in Cairo (Egyptian Capital).
The director of (interpack portfolio processing & packaging), Thomas Dohse said: “If you are thinking about how many plants you have to grow to get food, and if you waste it simply, this means you get double emissions by wasting food and growing food not by using food”.
The world wastes huge amounts of food, and the situation is not much different in developed and developing countries. For example, the waste rate in a country like America reaches 40%, and it is the same in a developing country suffering from an economic crisis like Egypt.
And the interpack is the largest trade fair for processing and packaging, which is taking place every 3 years, in Dusseldorf in German.
At the last event in 2023, numerous innovations for all user areas were on display: Food, beverages, confectionery and bakery products, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, non-food and industrial goods.
Food production
While many factors contribute to the climate change crisis, including food production, the world’s population is growing steadily, which means the need for more food, which can worsen the climate crisis and increase the complexity of the problem, but new technologies are capable of treating it, according to the director of (interpack portfolio processing & packaging), Thomas Dohse.
“The problem is population of the planet which grow and everyone needs to eat and live. So, in my opinion, that we need develop technologies that help us reduce emissions and have food to all people”, Dohse said.
He added, that interpack tries to tackle with food waste, as a part of the problem by doing and bringing innovations to the market.
“We show these innovations on our platform, and that why we step shows to these innovations all over the world”.
New technologies are not the only thing that world has to do to save the planet from the climate change according to interpack director.
He thinks that the world must work together to deal with this crisis.
“I think we can work all together on this topic. We see the COPs conferences that developments only on small steps, because all countries in the world are producing oil. The emission come from multiple things, so it not easy solve one thing and problem solved”.
“In the end, all countries have to come together to find solution, because it does not make sense that one country reduce the emissions and another produce more and more emissions. And we need to go forward because the time is running out”.
He continued: “I think there is no coordination between countries.
I admit. But I see in the trade shows, the world come together and discuss new technologies”.
“We can do that in our small sector here and bring the new innovations, then look to the whole picture and hopefully we find the way to solve the problem”, Dohse added.
Save food initiative
The topic of packaging is of central importance in relation to save food initiative. For this reason, interpack, plays a decisive role for the SAVE FOOD initiative, which has been fighting against food loss and waste worldwide since 2011, according its website.
At (Food Africa 2024), interpack announced the winners’ projects of the initiative competition, by Thomas Dohse.
Dohse said to “Food & Climate” platform, that the projects competition is held every year and the winners get tens thousands of euros.
This year the project of tomato juice from Nigeria, which is reducing the loss of tomato in North Nigeria and aims to reduce 30% of the lost through 6 month and this will fund for a year.
The second is Femko company from Saudi Arabia.
And the Gold winner is German company which introduces packing machine use new material that environment friendly materials.
“It has longer shelf life and this for sure means less food waste.
I think everything have to work together, Machin, products and customer behavior, and the winner did that”, he added.