Non-Dissolving Edible Packaging - Compost or Eat Your Containers

Let’s face it: current food packaging, on one hand, is useful to keep food fresher, but is wasteful. Think of all the plastic and polystyrene containers that are just tossed away after you bring food home to cook and eat. There is enough going to landfills as it is. 

Edible packaging in itself is not new. Usually these involve some starchy material which, unfortunately, dissolve when they come in contact with water.  A patent filed by Canadian food scientist Jung Han from the University of Manitoba involves making edible packaging more likely to be widely adopted. He shows that introducing beeswax to pea starch will make the product resistant to water. The mixture can be spread into thin films.

There is no word yet on what edible food packaging actually tastes like. But even if people don’t eat it, the packaging can be tossed into the compost bin and not the landfill.