PACKAGE PROGRESS

MATTHEW ENIS

Expanded Polystyrene foam was a revelation when Dow Chemical began manufacturing it in the 1940s. The lightweight, insulating, moisture-resistant plastic was great for making everything from pipe insulation and bicycle helmets to coffee cups and meat trays.

Unfortunately, the material is also very difficult to recycle, and it can take centuries to decompose. Since many of the products made from Styrofoam and other brands of EPS are highly disposable — restaurant takeout containers, packing material and one-use dinnerware — they have become a symbol of waste to environmentally conscious consumers. And, a growing number of municipalities, including San Francisco, Seattle and Portland, Ore., have enacted restrictions or bans on EPS products.

Whether responding to customer concerns or a localized ban, doing away with Styrofoam presents a unique problem for supermarket meat and seafood departments. EPS is simply very well-suited to use as a meat tray.

While there have been significant advances with compostable alternatives, such as trays made from polylactic acid resin, a plant-based biopolymer, PLA is also difficult to recycle, and few shoppers have access to a home compost heap or commercial composting program. Some companies, such as Whole Foods Market, have experimented with trays made of bull rush fiber, which will degrade quickly, even in a landfill. But, as Jim McConnell, store supplies and services specialist for Whole Foods' Rocky Mountain Region explained in a blog post last fall, these trays can start breaking down too soon when exposed to moisture.

Last month, D'Agostino's Supermarkets began working with Murray's Chicken and Eco MV, a packaging supplier, in the latest attempt to solve this problem. On Earth Day in April, D'Agostino's debuted a new line of Eco MV's meat trays, which are made from 100% wheat stalks — a fully biodegradable, compostable agricultural by-product — making the company the first chain in New York City to offer meat packaged with a fully-biodegradable tray.

Nick D'Agostino III, the president and chief executive officer of the New York-based 17-store company, said the new trays have been working out well so far.

“It doesn't have the same life as Styrofoam — Styrofoam has a life of forever,” he said. “Right now, we're getting somewhere between four and six days before it starts to warp, but that should be enough time for us to sell chickens.”

D'Agostino's gets its chickens from Murray's in the ice-pack stage and then packages them prior to placing them in meat department coolers — a key factor enabling the company to use these fiber-based biodegradable trays.

And, pairing the tray with products from Murray's Chicken, a local supplier of all-natural, Certified Humane raised and handled chicken based in nearby Fallsburg, N.Y., was a good fit. Shoppers who express concerns about how their food was grown or raised are typically the same shoppers who express concerns about the environment, noted Steve Gold, vice president of sales and marketing for Murray's.

“I think it's one bundle,” he said. “People who are concerned about what they're eating, about what's in their food, also care about the environment, and what you can do to help sustain it. As the market grows, and as people become more aware [of these options] there's going to be more people demanding sustainable packaging.”

Gold also added that, as a group, younger consumers were starting to express more concern about sustainable packaging.

Of course, passionate environmentalists who are up-to-date with the latest packaging industry news are not a very large demographic. Most shoppers will need to have the benefits of any new, sustainable package explained to them. D'Agostino said that his stores have been distributing brochures about the new trays and have placed shelf danglers and signs near the products. Murray's also developed a 2D barcode on-pack that will guide a customer's smartphone to a website that explains the trays.

So far, customer response has been very positive, D'Agostino said.

Gold agreed.

“The response that we've gotten from customers … from phone calls and emails, is incredible,” Gold said. “People seem to be happy to that there's an alternative available to the foam tray.”

With the launch successful thus far, D'Agostino said that the company will probably expand the use of the new trays to other items in its meat departments.

“We're just starting this as an experiment, but our plan is to definitely move it into our natural beef products,” he said. “And, we think that it may be a good solution for everything at some point.”

Meanwhile, Eco MV is still working to develop a biodegradable tray that could withstand moisture for several additional days — something that could be used by processors further up the cold chain.

“We're working on a tray that will last 20 days or more, for people who package meat and then ship it to grocery stores,” said Mark Martin, founder of Eco MV. “Our [current] trays are mainly used inside of grocery stores that package their own meat. They have to last around five or six days, and they do fine in that scenario. But, there's a much different market that is meat packers. They need to have something that can be transported in trucks over long distances [before being placed on a shelf in the same package]. … We're about to test a formula that is made of all-natural compounds and will biodegrade at an equal speed.”

Getting meat packers on-board with new sustainable packaging is going to be a key to building the category, Martin said, whether the packers have a case-ready offering, or whether they work with retailers that package their own meats.

Martin gave Scott Condon, executive vice president of Eco MV, credit for facilitating the deal between Murray's and D'Agostino's.

“He had an idea a few months back … if the meat packers got on board, then the grocery stores that they sold to would be more likely to get on board. The cost would be shared in that case.”

In this case, that's exactly what happened.

“The poultry producer became excited, and in conjunction with the stores, they launched not only the trays, but a marketing campaign that we helped them put together.”

No Knife Needed

Cryovac's new Next Generation Boneless Beef Bag represents another recent development in meat department packaging technology. Launched last month, the new bags will phase out the company's previous line of boneless beef, lamb and veal bags.

The new bags are outfitted with the company's QuickRip technology, which allows meat-cutters and associates to open the package without using a knife, a feature that was praised by focus groups of meat department managers.

“They said, it doesn't eliminate the knife in the back room, because we still need knives to trim and cut product, but anytime we can take the knives out of our employees' hands, it's a good thing,” Shawn Harris, director of fresh red meat for Cryovac, a division of Sealed Air Corp., explained in an interview last month.

“They also said it reduced cross-contamination, because [store associates] were using the same utensil, whether it was their trimming knife or a box cutter, to open the boxes and — not all the time, but many times — to open the bagged product.”

The opportunity to open these bags without a knife also helps prevent premium cuts of beef from becoming scored or otherwise damaged when the package is being opened in the back room, Harris said.

QuickRip feature is similar to the company's easy-open Grip & Tear bags targeted to retail applications.

“Basically, we've made a smaller header, without all of the print, to target back-room [applications]. It's simply a tear notch that's welded at the top. You really have to grasp both ends of the bag and pull in opposite directions to make the feature work.”

Harris added that the Grip & Tear bags have been on the market for 4½ years, and the company has not had a single reported instance of a package opening before a consumer intended.