50% of foods wasted in Nigeria on back of poor packaging—Dow

Dow Packaging, one of the world’s leading packaging solutions providers, says 50 percent of foods are wasted in Nigeria and other parts of the sub-Saharan Africa owing to poor packaging practices.
Dow says most of the foods are lost during handling, storage and production, adding that 150 kilos of foods are wasted in the region annually.
Speaking at the West Africa Explore, Discover, Grow event in Lagos held last Thursday, which was targeted at Dow customers and partners, Alessandro Corticelli, sales director, Dow Packaging and Specialty Plastics in the Middle East, Africa and Turkey , said 38 percent of foods were wasted during production, while 37 percent were lost during handling and storage.
Corticelli said 13 percent were lost at the distribution and marketing stages, just as seven percent were lost during processing. Five percent were often wasted during consumption, he said.
He said flexible plastic packaging had the capacity to stop these wastes by extending the shelf life of bananas to 15-36 days; beef to 14-23 days and whole chicken to 7- 20 days.
Flexible Packaging involves the use of made of easily yielding materials (mostly plastics) that can be readily changed in shape.
“One-thirds of food is wasted globally, which is equal to 1.3 billion tons of food lost every year. It is also interesting to know that 870 million people in the world are chronically malnourished. How do we feed them if we keep wasting food?” he asked.
He said contrary to the belief held in certain quarters that flexible plastic packaging was the major cause of environmental pollution, the problem was often human behaviour.
“Human behaviour pollute the environment, not flexible packaging,” he said.
“Our sustainability areas are to decrease the food wastes and materials. There is also recyclability of flexible packaging, which is an advantage” he said.

He urged Nigerians to stop burning plastic packages as they could earn large sums of money from them.
He further said Dow could offer Nigeria solutions on waste management to reduce CO2 emission and address marine debris and litter.
“Packaging is necessary for food and waste distribution. It save food, with more environmental benefit than challenges, “he stated.
He said 95 percent of plastic packaging produced around the world, worth $140 billion annually, were disposed after a short time, calling for a collaboration between Dow and Nigerian governments at all stages.
“From point of view of relationship, we have not seen any change in Nigeria. We haven’t seen institutions of government trying to ban plastics. We look forward to collaboration,” he said, adding that manufacturers and consumers need to shift their thinking away from cost of packaging to issues such as quality and environmental benefits.
“We would love to replicate what the waste management solutions we initiated in Ghana here in Nigeria. We are looking for Nigerians interested in the project. Nigerians should be the ones that want to help themselves,” he stated.
Marco Amici, marketing manager, Dow Packaging and Speciality, Europe, said the company had long-term plans in Nigeria but added that setting up a manufacturing plant at the moment in the country might not be feasible.
“There is an economic scale that is necessary to make an economic sense. We have plants in Europe but for polyethylene plant to be sustainable, you need to have 400,000 to 500,000 tons per year. Nigeria market is not as big now,” he said, urging Nigerians to adopt better packaging to grow the economy.

ODINAKA ANUDU