Sustainable Packaging Principles and Technologies

The Course provides students with terminological and technical tools to arrive at the conscious choice of materials and technologies for packaging, ensuring environmental sustainability and access to safe and high-quality food. The Course also provides the necessary knowledge to interpret and apply with adequate autonomy the mandatory and voluntary legislation on materials intended for the contact with food, supporting the application of sustainable packaging solutions in the food industry.

The course aims to complete the training of the student with notions and tools useful to deepen the theoretical, technological and legal aspects essential to understand the functions of packaging operations in the food industry, with a view to environmental and social sustainability.
The training of students will be enriched by the following skills:
· Knowledge and understanding
Acquisition of theoretical and practical knowledge about the regulatory, functional, and environmental compliance of materials and objects that will come into contact with foods during their preparation, distribution and storage.
Understanding food-packaging interactions for food quality and safety.
Understanding of the principles underlying the circularity of matter in food packaging and how the ecological footprint is expressed.
· Applied knowledge and understanding.
Ability to analyze the food-packaging-environment system according to mandatory and voluntary regulatory principles and to take corrective measures according to the production context.
Ability in applying the methodological and technological tools learned to make the best selection of a sustainable packaging solution.
· Autonomy in judgements
Ability in expressing a judgment about the functional, regulatory, and environmental compliance of a safe and sustainable packaging solution in different contexts (internal control, official control, etc.)
· Communicative skills
Ability in the use of appropriate terminology, both oral and written, to support personal observations and decisions with proper technical, scientific, and regulatory references.