How do you quantify a packaging footprint? Duda Farms aims to find out

Grower-shipper Duda Farm Fresh Foods has doubled down on sustainability efforts within their fresh produce business, starting with packaging.

In 2019, Duda named sustainable packaging as a company priority and teamed up with Measure to Improve LLC to identify quantifiable goals and metrics to improve its packaging footprint, according to a company white paper.

The first question to answer: How do you quantify packaging sustainability?

Quantifying Duda’s packaging footprint

With Measure to Improve's expertise and leadership, Duda identified sustainable packaging characteristics and created a process for collecting data on those for all primary, secondary and tertiary packaging, the report said.

Duda also established a “Growing Greener Generation” composed of staff from various departments in the company’s East and West Coast growing locations who focused on collecting data to establish a sustainable packaging baseline, according to the case study.

Related news: Closing the loop: Stemming plastic pollution and fostering a circular economy in produce

With over 98% of Duda’s secondary and tertiary packaging already recyclable or reusable, the work ahead for the company is focused largely on trialing and assessing recyclable primary packaging options that include post-consumer recycled content. Currently, just over 50% of its primary packaging is recyclable, making this one of Duda’s highest priorities, the report said.

Sustainability goals ahead

Duda said that it achieved its goal of taking a baseline inventory of its sustainable packaging efforts across the company in 2021, “documenting all packaging components used for our products as well as each sustainability characteristic,” according to the white paper.  

The report notes that future goals the grower-shipper hopes to achieve in the next two to seven years include:

Aspirational milestones by 2025

• Label 100% of primary packaging materials with the How2Recycle label.

• Achieve 90% recyclable, reusable or industrial compostable primary packaging materials.

Aspirational milestones by 2030

• Use 20% post-consumer recycled content in primary packaging.

• Reduce 20% of its virgin plastic in primary packaging materials.

More on these topics: Sustainability | Packaging