Plastic Passions: do I need to change food packaging

The Russian Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment has announced that it plans to limit the use of polystyrene packaging for food products. According to the agency, this plastic breaks down, is difficult and expensive to recycle, and therefore is not environmentally friendly. It is proposed to replace, in particular, a container made of expanded polystyrene for eggs with a cardboard one. Izvestia found out what such an initiative would mean for consumers and businesses.

Everything will get more expensive. And not only from the manufacturer

Polystyrene is the most affordable packaging material. According to market participants, its ban will lead to an immediate increase in prices for basic products, which will outpace inflation by half. So, eggs can rise in price by a quarter, chicken — by 15-20%. This will hit the most vulnerable segments of the population and, in turn, will displease the most low-income buyers.

"The issue of banning the use of polystyrene packaging solutions should be approached very carefully. First of all, due to the economic inexpediency of such a ban right now," Ilya Bereznyuk, Managing Partner of Agro &Food Communications, is convinced, "The cost of agricultural production has increased significantly over the past few years. In the last 4 months alone, according to our company's estimates, its weighted average growth in poultry production has been 10-16%, year on year. In the dairy industry, the cost of raw milk increased by 12% in 2024. And this trend was observed in almost all key segments of the agro-industrial complex. Tariffs for electricity, fuel and lubricants, wages, mixed feed and individual ingredients have increased. At the same time, due to market conditions, retail prices remain at the same level and even decrease — this year, for example, a chicken egg has fallen in price by 18% year-on-year. This forces agricultural companies to restrain selling prices, sometimes at a loss to themselves. The new introduction, the ban on polystyrene, will increase pressure on the manufacturer due to the cost of transition and is likely to negatively affect the price level."

Polystyrene packaging is used by many poultry companies. Of course, there are packing cells made of so-called pulperboard, but its consumer properties are noticeably lower. It gets wet, which means it preserves products worse.

According to representatives of the agro-industrial sector, packaging should not be banned and replaced, but rather the existing modern technologies should be developed. To develop solutions related to recycling, to stimulate both producers and businesses in this direction in order to develop a closed-loop economy. Moreover, the agro-industrial complex faces the task of recycling half of its product waste by 2035. And this applies, among other things, to food packaging. In the conditions in which the economy is today, it is important not to harm the business so that it can achieve its goals, and most importantly, prevent another round of price increases. It is enough to recall the situation with the rise in price of eggs in 2023. Then the "egg inflation" was stopped, but with the abandonment of polystyrene, the cost will increase not only for the manufacturer, but also along the entire commodity chain.

Is it possible to simply replace polymer with cardboard?

There is another reason why pulperboard is not a full—fledged replacement, especially nationwide. There are significant objective problems with its use in several large regions beyond the Urals and Siberia. Some people don't have enough equipment, others don't have enough raw materials, especially during the season. Delivering raw materials or finished products to the east of Russia is not the best option. Logistics will automatically turn all eggs east of the Ural Mountains golden.

At the same time, experts point out that it is impossible to simply replace polystyrene with pulperboard and cast cells using this technique. It can only be used to make polystyrene packaging and nothing else. The equipment (and the business acquired a lot on credit, for which it is still paying) is not subject to retrofitting, and the massive shutdown of equipment means up to 142 billion rubles of investment, more than 37 thousand jobs, including at city—forming enterprises. And since the existing production lines are designed for specific packaging formats, in order to switch to a different technology, not only new machines will be needed, but also new logistics, storage and labeling standards.

In addition, almost all the equipment and machine components that can produce cardboard containers for eggs are supplied to us by unfriendly countries. There is no need to explain what this means: at any moment we may be left without spare parts, maintenance and software.

There is another aspect of the problem: it is clearly premature to talk about the cheapness of cardboard boxes, as indicated by Mikhail Vyatkin, Commercial director of Rusagroobedenie LLC. Although there is an oversupply of cardboard on the market right now and there is a shortage of demand for packaging, prices are kept low, which allows manufacturers to compete with cheaper and more convenient polystyrene. As soon as the market situation changes, prices will rise. As well as logistical costs: from the point of view of storage, polystyrene is very unpretentious — foamed polystyrene can be removed to a cold hangar and stored there. This will not work with cardboard —it collects moisture during temperature changes, which is why it cures and loses its quality during storage.

At the same time, the expert emphasizes that polymer packaging provides significantly greater safety of food products due to the characteristics of the material itself.

"In case of any difficulties during transportation, storage and laying out, polystyrene will not leak,— emphasizes Mikhail Vyatkin. — If an egg is broken in the top box of the pallet, where there may be 5 boxes in height, then in the cardboard it will most likely leak to the entire depth of the row — in fact, all this will be thrown away. In plastic, what is broken will remain in the cell — only this package will suffer. Therefore, a significant increase in losses can be predicted."

Who is responsible for the result?

Experts emphasize that polystyrene complies with GOST and environmental standards. It is recyclable, and its extrusion requires less energy consumption than its analogues. CO₂ emissions during processing are lower. Moreover, the food storage standards themselves, including meat and eggs, explicitly provide for the use of polystyrene packaging. And it is necessary to consider the environmental friendliness of packaging not only from the point of view of the possibility or impossibility of its processing. Its main function is to preserve the food, to prevent its spoilage.

Packaging manufacturers have their own opinion: you need to act carefully and gradually. Even if we plan to abandon polystyrene, it will be no earlier than 2035. You must allow the equipment to be used until it becomes physically obsolete. Businesses need government support and preferential loans to re-equip their production facilities.

But these seemingly obvious issues were not addressed in the proposal to ban polystyrene. No one asked about the opinion of consumers, for whom, ultimately, both meat and egg producers and manufacturers of food packaging work. However, the situation is still developing in such a way that ordinary store visitors will have to pay for the "progressive" initiative.