Evaluation of natural wax for green packaging applications

Abstract: Society has become more aware of the negative environmental impact of the petroleum-based packaging materials (e.g. plastics) used in the food industry. Therefore, cleaner and more sustainable packaging with ecological zero-impact is in demand. One of the solutions for this problem could be the use of natural wax-impregnated paper. It has been recently demonstrated that wax obtained from arctic berries may be a good candidate for this application. This project is intended to define the properties of this wax which are essential for the food-packaging application and evaluate if berry wax can fulfil those requirements. For this reason, physical characterization of different natural waxes has been conducted and compared. On the one hand, it has been concluded that pure arctic berry wax presents similar thermal parameters to commercially available natural waxes. In addition, mechanical testing and barrier properties of paper substrates coated with beeswax and lingonberry have been successfully carried out. During the testing, wax-coated samples showed interesting results in terms of good barrier properties, which is the key factor to be a promising alternative for food packaging applications. Nevertheless, further research should be conducted in order to study other barrier properties and mechanical performance of these natural wax-impregnated papers. In addition, it would be of great interest to investigate more precise coating procedures in order to obtain the optimum way for coating paper substrates with natural waxes.