Packaging Innovations to Reduce Food Loss and Waste: Are Italian Manufacturers Willing to Invest?

#Reviewer 1

Recommendations

Response

1. For literature review part, authors have not demonstrated very well what research gaps should be filled based on previous research. To be more specific, what has been done by scholars should be well categorized first. Further, what has not bee done yet or what inconsistent findings still exist which need to be further addressed.

Thanks for your useful suggestion.

We decided to completely modify the Second 2 (Background on health and eco-innovation packaging).

Specifically, we have reported a synthesis of this part in the introduction while we have developed a new one (titled Literature review), where we have analyzed what has been done by scholars in this field, empathizing the relative gaps.

2. How the sample was designed and approached to collect the data whether the sample is representative.

Thanks for your useful suggestion.

We have specified how we have designed and approached to collect the data in the Section 3.3 (Data collection), as follows:

“The sample was identified through a stratified probabilistic procedure with reference to the economic sector and the province which the companies belong. Participants were selected through the icribs.com website that contain a list of all the Italian companies divided according to the National Institute of Statistics’ classification of the economic activities (ATECO) [74]; 92 companies were contacted by phone and a questionnaire was sent after their approval, with a response rate of 22%. The questionnaire was elaborated by the authors using Google Module and sent by email. We used a semi-structured questionnaire with open and close-ended questions, based on the theoretical model illustrated in the previous section. Specifically, the survey was composed of nine sections, as shown in the Appendix A – Table 1 and carried out from November 2019 to April 2020. Then, the chosen methodology allowed the collection of a wide array of qualitative information starting from the general characteristics of the company (e.g., identification data, business details, human resources) to information on innovation activity in the F&D industry related to the packaging, as well as the definition of different demands for innovation”. 

About the representativiness of the sample, because the methodology used, has been the multiple case study, there was not the need to have a representative sample.

Further for your additional information, we would like to underline also that the sample was targeted on micro and small and medium enterprieses selected according to a  turnover not exceeding 50 million euros and a number of employees not exceeding 249.

Surelly, the limited number of the sample may have been affected by the period in which the survey was conducted, which coincides in part with the Covid-19 lockdown. Indeed, during this period most of the companies were not willing to replay to the survey.

3. The authors should clearly pinpoint the contribution to both research and practice in the introduction chapter and also discuss the research and managerial implications much more comprehensively in the ending chapters.

Thanks again for your suggestion.

Both in the introduction and discussion we have better specified the contribution for research, companies and policy implications.  We have tried: 1. to fill the gap in the literature on economic analysis related to determining the manufacturers’ willingness to invest for both health and eco-innovation innovations; 2. to make companies more aware of the technology supplier in the field of health and eco innovation; 3. to use packaging as a tool to promote environmental sustainability, responsible production and consumption.

Regarding the Introduction (Section 1), we integrated it as follows:

“This research, identifying the most promising innovations in food packaging, could contribute to make companies more aware of the technology supplier in the field of health and eco innovation and to be competitive in the global market by differentiating the product through innovative packaging. Moreover, a better understanding of the adoption of eco and health innovations can be of great interest not only to the research but also to the policymakers who are deputies to promotion of the environmental sustainability and human health.”

Regarding the Conclusions (Section 6), we modified as follows:

“Given the presence of very few existing studies on this topic, these results surely fill the gap in scientific literature, contributing to improve the research in this field. Specifically, the paper provided a complete analysis about the key drivers and barriers affecting the micro and SMEs’ willingness to invest for both health and eco-innovation innovations. The main results show that most of the interviewed manufacturers are willing to invest in at least one packaging innovation, choosing mainly between the active packaging and the compostable one.

Additionally, the overall results of the study have several practical implications. The study highlights that many companies do not have a clear understanding of their needs regarding packaging innovations; this finding underlines the importance of the definition and emersion of potential and latent demand for innovation and of the role of bridging institutions (TTOs, technology poles, etc.) and collaborations between research institutions and industries. The results could lead to market implications such as the production costs, the complexity of these technologies as well as the consumers’ acceptance.  Finally, the study involves policy implications through the use of packaging as a tool to promote environmental sustainability, responsible production and consumption.

4. Please develop a discussion section. Please link the results of your research with the issue of food waste (widely discussed in Literature).

Thanks for your appreciated input.

We developed a Discussion Section (no. 5), where we linked the research’s results with those already existing in the literature review about the opportunities to use food packaging innovations to reduce FLW.

Suggested literature:

- Fonseca, L.M.; Domingues, J.P.; Dima, A.M. Mapping the Sustainable Development Goals Relationships. Sustainability 2020, 12, 3359.
- Zimon, D.; Madzik, P.; Domingues, P. Development of Key Processes along the Supply Chain by Implementing the ISO 22000 Standard. Sustainability 2020, 12, 6176.
- Principato, L.; Ruini, L.; Guidi, M.; Secondi, L. Adopting the circular economy approach on food loss and waste: The case of Italian pasta production.Res. Conserv. Recycl.2019,144, 82–89.
- Principato, L., Secondi, L., Cicatiello, C., & Mattia, G. (2020). Caring more about food: The unexpected positive effect of the Covid-19 lockdown on household food management and waste. Socio-Economic Planning Sciences, 100953.
- Fonseca, L.M. et al., Assessment of Circular Economy within Portuguese Organizations. Sustainability 2018, 10, 2521.

Thanks for the useful references that we have included in the manuscript.

However, to be complete in terms of sustainability, some health aspects should be considered better. Food contact materials could be mentioned. For example, the recent review article of Groh et al. (2020) can provide some ideas. (Groh et al., 2020. Overview of intentionally used food contact chemicals and their hazards. Environment International, in press. Available online: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envint.2020.106225). Please, improve the manuscript mentioning such aspects at least in the Introduction and in the Conclusions (for future research).

Thanks for the reference and the suggestions. We integrated the Introduction and the Conclusions including some health aspects regarding the food contact materials and the relative hazards.

Specifically, regarding the Introduction (Section 1), we modified as follows:

“A further important aspect that affects both consumers and producers is the absence of dangerousness of materials in contact with food. Plastics, coatings, paper and board appear to be a significant source of hazardous substances; even printing inks and adhesives are characterized by dangerous elements [50]. In this contest a large introduction of eco and health packaging in the food sector represents a powerful tool to ensure more sustainable production and healthier consumption”.

Regarding the Conclusions (Section 6), we modified as follows:

“Suggestions for further research could be the evaluation of consumers and producer’s perception of hazards related to packaging in particular materials in direct contact with food, also focusing on the European regulation concerning the risk management related to the potential toxicity of some materials. Such a study would make it possible to investigate the level of knowledge and the actual need for information to ensure food safety and consumers’ health”.

#Reviewer 2

Recommendations

Response

- Lines 17-18: “Results show that many firms were aware of their need of packaging innovation and about the technological opportunity to achieve it”.

Please, reformulate the sentence improving the grammar (e.g. write “their need FOR packaging”).

We reformulated it. Thanks.

- Line 20: It would be better avoiding citations in the Abstract (i.e. you should remove “Carlucci et al. (2010)” from here).

We removed it and reformulated the sentence.

“Results show that many firms were aware of their need for packaging innovation and of the available technological opportunity. However, only the F&D manufacturers who showed a Real demand, according to a taxonomy approach which also considers the Potential and Latent demand for the innovation, were effectively prompt to invest”.

- Lines 27-28: “Currently, the agro-food system feeds the worldwide population composed of 7 billion people, and it will have to provide additional food for another 2.5 billion by 2050”.

Please give a citation.

We reformulated the sentence adding a more recent reference, as follows:

“Currently, the agro-food system feeds the worldwide population composed of 7.7 billion people, and it will have to provide additional food for another 2 billion by 2050 [1].”.

- Lines 88-89: “Moreover, according to ISTAT (2010) most of these companies are located in Apulia region (Italy) [27]”.

In truth, your source shows that Apulia is the region with the highest number of these companies (compared to the Italian regions). Still, it has not more than half of such Italian companies. As a consequence, to write it in the following way is more proper: “Moreover, according to ISTAT (2010), Apulia is the Italian region with the highest number of these companies [21]”.

We corrected it as follows:

“Specifically, the study focuses on 20 micro and SMEs, located in Apulia that represents the Italian region with the highest number of the agro-food companies [51,52]”.

- Line 175: “Source: Our elaboration, 2021”. Please, reformulate the sentence more appropriately (for example: “Source: This manuscript”)

As reported in the word format provided by the Journal, there is no a specific indication about source in the case of personal elaboration. Thus, we preferred to delete “Our elaboration, 2021” and not to include any quotes considering that tables and figures are of our intellectual property. Most of the published papers in MDPI follow this rule.

- Line 246: “Source: Our elaboration, 2021”. Please, reformulate the sentence more appropriately (for example: “Source: This manuscript”)

As reported in the word format provided by the Journal, there is no a specific indication about source in the case of personal elaboration. Thus, we preferred to delete “Our elaboration, 2021” and not to include any quotes considering that tables and figures are of our intellectual property. Most of the published papers in MDPI follow this rule.

- Line 261: there is a typo (“aa”).

We corrected it.

- Line 280: “For instance, it well known that...”. You have to write “For instance, it IS well known that.”

We corrected it.

- Figure 2. Location of the 20 micro and SMEs Apulian F&D manufacturers.

In the Figure, you should have 20 micro and SMEs, but I only count 19. Please, add the missing enterprise.

Thanks for this important observation.

The missing enterprise (D1) was added into the Figure 2.

- Line 390: “Source: Our elaboration, 2021”. Please, reformulate the sentence more appropriately (for example: “Source: This manuscript”)

As reported in the word format provided by the Journal, there is no a specific indication about source in the case of personal elaboration. Thus, we preferred to delete “Our elaboration, 2021” and not to include any quotes considering that tables and figures are of our intellectual property. Most of the published papers in MDPI follow this rule.

- Lines 392-404 (Data Collection): Please, specify the period in which the survey was conducted.

We specified it. Thanks.

“Specifically, the survey was composed of nine sections, as shown in the Appendix A – Table 1 and carried out from November 2019 to April 2020 ”.

- Line 423: “Source: Our elaboration, 2021”. Please, reformulate the sentence more appropriately (for example: “Source: This manuscript”)

As reported in the word format provided by the Journal, there is no a specific indication about source in the case of personal elaboration. Thus, we preferred to delete “Our elaboration, 2021” and not to include any quotes considering that tables and figures are of our intellectual property. Most of the published papers in MDPI follow this rule.

- Line 451: “Source: Our elaboration, 2021”. Please, reformulate the sentence more appropriately (for example: “Source: This manuscript”)

As reported in the word format provided by the Journal, there is no a specific indication about source in the case of personal elaboration. Thus, we preferred to delete “Our elaboration, 2021” and not to include any quotes considering that tables and figures are of our intellectual property. Most of the published papers in MDPI follow this rule.

- Line 485: “Source: Our elaboration, 2021”. Please, reformulate the sentence more appropriately (for example: “Source: This manuscript”)

As reported in the word format provided by the Journal, there is no a specific indication about source in the case of personal elaboration. Thus, we preferred to delete “Our elaboration, 2021” and not to include any quotes considering that tables and figures are of our intellectual property. Most of the published papers in MDPI follow this rule.

- Line 553: “Source: Our elaboration, 2021”. Please, reformulate the sentence more appropriately (for example: “Source: This manuscript”)

As reported in the word format provided by the Journal, there is no a specific indication about source in the case of personal elaboration. Thus, we preferred to delete “Our elaboration, 2021” and not to include any quotes considering that tables and figures are of our intellectual property. Most of the published papers in MDPI follow this rule.

-  In the Conclusions, the authors should highlight more the limited number of enterprises they interviewed (this is probably the study's main limitation). Indeed, the statement “According to the results of this analysis, Italian manufacturers are prompt to invest in eco and healthy innovation packaging” appears to be excessive, given the limited number of companies involved in this research. However, the study could be taken as a reference for broader research and surveys at the national level.

We changed as follows:

“The limits of this study are related to the sample size, the geographic settings, as well as the economic activities. Specifically, the main limitation is linked to the few number of enterprises involved in the survey (20). Thus, this research could be taken as a reference for broader application at the national level and in other food markets. This could highlight differences due to resource endowments and firms’ internal capabilities, as well as policy, structural or cultural issues ”.

#Reviewer 3

Recommendations

Response

However, the definition of the objectives is unclear or, in my opinion, wrong, since it suggests that it will not only analyze the willing to invest in F&D packaging innovations, but also induces to link it in someway to the contribution to the reduction of the FLW and mentions “glocal” approach. These two aspects are non-existent at all throughout the paper. 

Thank you for this important suggestion.

We decided, first of all, to delete the mention of the glocal approach and, secondly, to better stress the link between the F&D packaging innovations and FLW reduction. Actually, we have significantly revised the manuscript in its each part because we have realized that the objectives were not so clear.

The article is (in my opinion) too long to hold the reader's interest. The section “Background on health and eco-innovation packaging” could be reduced or integrated in the Introduction. Alternatively, you could integrate it into the Materials and Methods section but it would require to be reduced to essentially featuring Active packaging, Intelligent packaging and Compostable packaging.

Thanks for your suggestion. We decided to reduce this part and to integrate into the Introduction section, as follows:

“The active and intelligent packaging allow to maintain food quality and to extend food shelf-life and to monitor the freshness of foods [10-12], respectively, as established by the Regulation 1933/2004/EC and 450/2009/EC [21,24]. The active packaging is in particular designed to deliberately incorporate components that may release substances into the packaged food or the surrounding environment or absorb some substances from food or the environment [15,25-31]. The key function of the intelligent packaging, instead, is to record the environmental conditions both inside and outside the packaging through the use of internal (inside the package) or external (outside the package) sensors or indicators [28,32]. The recent European Directive on waste (2018/851), that introduces the waste hierarchy, points out the importance of preventing FLW as the first strategy to be adopted by all the actors of the FSC. Thus, these health innovations are considered a way to avoid FLW [33].

The compostable packaging, instead, could be considered an alternative option whenever the prevention of FLW is not feasible, as stressed by the waste hierarchy [12,33,34]. This latter promotes the FLW reuse as raw materials for the production of biopolymers for eco-innovations in packaging [35,36]. Indeed, in a Circular Economy (CE) perspective, FL from production processes and FW from consumers can be reused as direct or indirect source of inputs for other processes, minimizing resource scarcity and overexploitation [37-39]. Then, compostable packaging could be completely biodegradable, bio-based, and its chemical, physical, and mechanical properties are comparable to petroleum-derived plastics [35,36,40-44]. Compostability is the ability of a material to turn into compost within 3 months through the industrial composting process, according to the EN 13432 standard [40]. During past years, the F&D industry has shown great interest in these innovations, since they can represent a suitable solution to enhance resources efficiency and to lower emissions that would have been generated in extracting and processing non-renewable raw materials [40-42]”.

I think that the taxonomy proposed by Carlucci et al. should be explained in a more profuse way as its implications are not well understood, except probably for a reader already familiar with it.

Thank you for this suggestion.

We reformulated the explanation of the theoretical model simplifying its description, as follows:

“In order to reach the research goal, the theoretical model proposed by Muscio et al. (2010), “Firm’s demand for innovation”, was used to verify if the eventual manufactures’ willingness to invest for packaging innovations could be considered as real [53]. Indeed, according to this taxonomy, the demand for innovation could be determined by the combination of the awareness of their needs and the knowledge about the technological solution to address their needs. Then, three typologies of demand for innovation were identified:

•             Real demand: firms are aware of their needs and know how to act in order to improve their products/processes;

•             Latent demand: firms have a limited capacity to translate their needs into potential innovation processes;

•             Potential demand: firms’ innovation needs are not explicated because there are no firms in the area capable of responding to certain innovation challenges.

In this study, while the theoretical model proposed by Muscio et al., (2010) focused on analyzing the business needs in terms of improvements to firm’s products and processes, the theoretical framework we propose focuses on firm’s demand for packaging innovations. Then, as aforementioned in the introduction section, the technologies proposed are: active, intelligent and compostable packaging. Table 1 shows the principal innovation needs and the relative existing packaging technologies to address them.

Table 2 shows the adaptation of the theoretical model proposed by Muscio et al. (2010) to our case study. Specifically, the real demand was integrated by the authors with an additional characteristic in which the firm’ capacity to translate need into a packaging innovation could be not only autonomous buy also dependent on external source of knowledge.

Through the use of this theoretical model, we will be able to analyze if the willingness to invest for packaging innovations (active, intelligent and compostable packaging), expressed by F&D manufacturers, could be considered as a real, latent or a potential demand. Figure 1 shows the logical flow of the theoretical model proposed by the authors. It will be tested through a multiple case study methodology, which involves 20 micro and SMEs located in Apulia region (Italy).

Finally, I miss the existence of a discussion that adds value to the results. As a suggestion, I would include a comparison with other authors to see if they are consistent with other geographic contexts, company sizes, or comparable industries.

Thanks for your appreciated input.

We developed a Discussion Section (no. 5), where we linked the research’s results with those already existing in the literature review about the opportunities to use food packaging innovations to reduce FLW.

Also I would find very interesting if you try to establish any correlation between the adoption of the studied innovations and the improvement of the FLW issue. Likewise, as I criticized in the definition of objectives, it should be linked to both the FLW and glocal topics, if it is to be maintained.

Thanks for your useful suggestion.

We better described and analyzed in the new section “Literature review”, that has placed the previous one, the correlation between innovation packaging and reduction of FLW.  This is for identifying more clearly the gap we filled with our research and for underlining better the aim of the paper.