Food Safety or Food Waste? The Plastic Dilemma

6th of July 2025

Jul 06, 2025

Plastic Packaging: Securing our Food Supply or Contaminating Our Food?

by Nadine Wahab

The Global Stakes

As diplomats convene for the UN Global Plastic Treaty negotiations reconvening this coming August, food packaging sits at the epicenter of the plastics dilemma.

Plastic-lined packaging poses a dual crisis: its non-recyclability floods landfills, while its slow degradation releases microplastics into our food and water. The food and beverage sector’s reliance on these materials makes it a primary driver of this contamination cycle.

Protecting Our Food Without Poisoning It — The Plastic Paradox We Must Resolve

As Egypt enters another blistering summer, food safety becomes more than just a kitchen concern—it becomes a public health imperative. Temperatures routinely soar above 40°C, and the risk of food spoilage rises with every degree. It’s no wonder plastic packaging remains so dominant in our market. Lightweight, durable, and affordable, it helps keep meat from rotting, milk from souring, and fruits from bruising. It also greatly facilitates food transport, simplifies inventory keeping, and ensures the illusion of cleanliness- an ever growing selling point in F&B marketing. For many food producers and retailers, plastic isn’t just convenient—it’s essential.

But this convenience comes with an invisible cost.

Mounting scientific evidence shows that the very plastic wrapping our food can slowly contaminate Heat and sunlight—abundant in Egypt’s climate—accelerate the degradation of common plastics like PET (used in water bottles) and LDPE (used in food wraps), leaching microplastics and harmful chemicals into what we eat and drink. In a cruel twist of irony, the material we rely on to make food safer may be compromising our long-term health.

The Double-Edged Sword of Plastic

Plastic’s role in modern food systems is undeniably important. If designed correctly, it is undeniable that plastic extends the shelf life of perishables by protecting it from bruises, distributing the weight of produce and minimizing rotting due to compression and impact damage, avoiding any transport caused spoilage which leads to significantly reducing food waste. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), 14% of global food would spoil before even reaching store shelves. In countries where refrigeration is inconsistent and supply chains are long, plastic is often the most accessible tool to prevent hunger.

Certain items—like raw meat, dairy products, or infant formula—require sterile, tamper-proof containment. Alternatives like paper or glass often fall short: paper absorbs moisture and fails under humid conditions, while glass, though inert and non-toxic, is heavy, breakable, and expensive to transport. Metal corrodes with acidic foods and edible coatings have limited applicability. There’s no denying that in many cases, plastic has been the most effective option.

But growing research paints a darker picture.

Drs. Wei Min and Beizhan Yan of Columbia University found that a liter of bottled water included about 240,000 tiny pieces of plastic. A single plastic tea bag can release up to 11.6 billion microplastics when steeped. These tiny particles don’t just pass through our bodies harmlessly. They carry endocrine-disrupting chemicals that are linked to reproductive issues, developmental harm, and even cancer.

Microplastics have been detected in human placentas, blood, and lungs. In the natural environment, they are accumulating in fish, vegetables, and drinking water sources. In Egypt, where much of our food is grown in open fields and stored in open sun-drenched markets, this issue is magnified. A water bottle left in a car or on a beach may appear harmless, but under UV rays, its plastic breaks down, releasing toxic compounds like antimony—a heavy metal associated with liver and heart damage.

And beyond use, production itself contributes significantly to environmental degradation. Behind every plastic item lies a chain of pollution—from extraction to factory floor. Plastic manufacturing leaves a long trail of pollution and excess energy consumption.

The Regulatory Blind Spot

Despite growing concern, regulation lags behind. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration still lacks comprehensive guidelines on microplastic migration. Global standards also fail to account for the "cocktail effects"—the interaction of multiple chemicals leaching simultaneously from packaging. In many developing countries, oversight is weaker still, with enforcement often hindered by limited testing infrastructure and industry influence.

Food-grade plastics like PET, HDPE, and PP are considered "safe" under ideal conditions—cool, dry, and away from sunlight. But how often are these conditions ever met? In cooler climate zones, storage conditions are often compromised for the sake of square meter cost-effectiveness, and in the warmer climate zones, such as our case in Egypt, sunlight beats down year-round and temperatures can turn cars into ovens, plastic containers become chemical incubators.

Rethinking What "Safe" Means

The plastics industry insists that virgin PET and PP are safe for food contact—and under lab-controlled conditions, that may be true. But real-world use is messier. A bottle left in the sun may start to taste strange. A plastic-wrapped sandwich stored in a hot bag may absorb unseen particles. If we can smell the plastic, we are inhaling it. If we can taste it, we are ingesting it.

These risks aren't theoretical. They are measurable. And they are growing.

So, what now?

It is time to account for the waste transaction of our packaging. How long is the lifespan of the packaged good vs. the lifespan of the package that came with it?

It’s time to invest in reuse systems that shift us away from single-use dependency. This means designing packaging that is durable, cleanable, and built to last—not just survive one shipment. It means developing local systems for collection, sanitation, and redistribution. It also means confronting the business model of fast-moving consumer goods—and rethinking what counts as "good."

Some plastics will still have a place in the future of food safety. But our default shouldn’t be disposable. It should be resilient, regenerative, and responsible.

With the right policy support, innovation funding, and public pressure, we can protect both our food and our health. We can demand packaging that feeds us without harming us. And we can build a system that values longevity over convenience, health over habit, and safety that includes the unseen.

Sources

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