Understanding the views of the UK food packaging supply chain in order to support a move to circular economy systems

This study set out to better understand the feelings of stakeholders from the UK food packaging supply chain towards a move to Circular Economy (CE) systems. The research areas studied included current and future challenges facing supply chain stakeholders, the consideration of Transformative Technologies (TT) to enable packaging solutions in the move to CE systems and what CE systems using TT would look like for the UK’s chilled food packaging sector. A questionnaire was selected to obtain data from across the UK Food Packaging Supply Chain. Participants were selected from six industry stakeholder groups, with 24 completing the questionnaire. This study has clearly shown there is a large spectrum of solutions in a move to CE, each with their own benefits and limitations. TT has an ability to enable these, but in selecting the best one for a specific packaging solution, a decision maker must take into consideration business constraints of the supply chain and the consumer’s behaviour towards new solutions.