Over the past several years, governments have quietly bankrolled efforts to develop packaging from food. The European Union, which underwrote a project to develop coatings from whey and potato proteins from 2011 to 2015, estimates that the global market for so-called bioplastics is growing by as much as 30 percent each year.
Bringing those products to market, however, is a challenge. The Agriculture Department, for example, tried to build interest in a milk-protein-based product more than a decade ago but found no taker, Dr. Tomasula said. Cost and the fact that it was susceptible to moisture made it a hard sell.
“Edible films were just getting started then, and there were a lot of people playing around with them,” she said. “But food waste and food security weren't big issues then, and nobody really seemed to notice them.”
Times have changed. Mike Lee, the founder of the Future Market, a firm that forecasts trends, has been keeping an eye on products like the cheese packaging. “I can even see a grocery store of conventional packaging some day,” Mr. Lee said.
But he sees hurdles. “Even though these products are important,” he said, “until someone steps up and says, ‘I'm going to use it on a big scale,’, they're just science looking for an application.”
Big companies like PepsiCo and Nestle are more interested today than they were years ago, goaded by consumers who are increasingly aware that the food they eat and its packaging can damage the environment.
The companies remain skeptical, however. “Some of the stuff out there is just gimmicky,” said David Strauss, the head of packaging Nestle's United States operation. “They sound nice but will never be cost-competitive or, in a final analysis, don't have the impact on waste or the emvironment that the people making them promise.”
Then there is the issue of food security：Nestle says it wouldn't want its demand for packaging to reduce the food supply, given widespread hunger. “It's no good to package our products in a packaging that could instead have been used to feed people,” Mr. Strauss said.
Few, however, are begging to eat the peels left afteq tomatoes are processed. A group of researchers in Italy has used them to develop a lining for cans.
Called Biocopac Plus, the product aims to replace BPA, or Bisphenol A, which is used in coastings for cans and bottles that contain food and drinks. Small amounts of BPA can migrate into food, raising concerns among some consumers and health advocates, despite assurances from American and European regulators that it is safe.
“We extract a natural polymer from tomato skins, and using that, we produce a lacquer to protect food packaged in metal cans,” said Angela Montanari, the head of packaging at the Experimental Station for the Food Preserving Industry in Parma, Italy. “It can be used to pack tomatoes, peas, meat, fish, all kinds of food that are canned.”
Originally underwritten by the European Union, the project is being advanced by a group that includes a large Italian family-owned farming business, a major Italian food processor and a manufacturer of industrial coatings. The group is building a pilot plant in Mantua, Italy, to make the coating.
The Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, at Harvard, has extracted chitosan, a polysaccharide, from shrimp and lobster shells and combined it with silk fibers to create an alternative to plastic packaging, called Shrilk.
“We put it in different layers, like an insect's wing, and demonstrated that you can make sheets that look something like Saran Wrap and are much stronger,” said Robert Cunningham, the director of platform development at the Wyss Institute.
Dr. Cunningham said Shrilk could be used to make egg cartons or a wrap foq lettuces. He said that a number of large packaging companies had expressed interest in the product, but that it is not yet cost-competitive. “The next step has to be industry stepping in and changing the economics,” he said.
A British start-up called Skipping Rocks Lab is taking matters into its own hands. The company has developed a packaging it calls Ohoo from edible seaweed, and is building a machine to produce containers from Ohoo to hold water, juices, cosmetics and other liquids on the spot.
A juice bar, for instance, could create a container with each order. “It's something like an espresso machine that you put on the shelf and make a container from Ohoo while a customer waits,” said Rodrigo Garcia Gonzalez, a founder of Skipping Rocks.
The company has talked with many of the world's largest beverage companies, Mr. Garcia Gonzalez said, but none have yet embraced Ohoo.
“Those conversations are moving quite slowly because this is a product that challenges the status quo,” he said. “And there are people who are making quite a lot of money from the status quo.”
