Advances in the Food Packaging Production from Agri-Food Waste and By-Products: Market Trends for a Sustainable Development

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to revise the MS entitled “Advances in the Food Packaging Production from Agri-food Waste and By-products: Market Trends for a Sustainable Development” by Cristofoli and his/her colleagues that was submitted to “sustainability”. 

This manuscript provides a comprehensive overview of the research progress in the production of food packaging using agricultural food wastes and by-products. some interesting results were showed, especially in the areas of circular economy models, biological refining concepts, and life cycle assessment.

The MS submitted is suitable for sustainability. However, there are several suggestions that have to consider by the authors.

1.      You need to add an extra information in the abstract. Kindly focus on presenting the key progress and novelties of food packaging production from agri-food waste and by-products derived from the review itself.

2.      Keywords need to be further refined. Some keywords are unnecessary.

3.      The full text is lengthy and can be more concise. Some paragraphs and sentences can be merged and simplified.

4.      The full text is more illustrative than commentary. My cautious suggestion is that the author can add some valuable comments and comparative analysis. For example, the author only lists current production technologies without in-depth comparative analysis.

5.      Please carefully check the format of the references. For example, Line 1303.

Best regards,

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors did an overwhelming review of the papers published in previous researchers, although a little bit over emhpasizing the bio-polymer part regarding other biomass components like cellulose and lignin.

 Maybe some additional resource would be interesting to add as lignin is currently one of the most exploited and researched topic in biorefinery concepts:

 

 Cocoa husk biomass conversion for application in fibre packaging 10.1007/s13399-022-03330-2

 

LIGNOCELLULOSIC BIO-REFINERY DOWNSTREAM PRODUCTS IN FUTURE PACKAGING APPLICATIONS https://doi.org/10.24867/GRID-2020-p2

Bio-based Products from Lignocellulosic Waste Biomass: A State of the Art https://doi.org/10.15255/CABEQ.2021.1931

 

All packaging materials regarding food safety needs to be approved by EFSA, and that is currently also a bottleneck for using waste streams for new packaging applications. A few sentences on the real world hurdles in the application of the laboratory derived materials to market introduction regarding potential hazards would also be benefitial. 

The last part of the customer/market is very US based with no regard to EU Green Deal Agenda, Packaging Waste directive and Bioeconomy incentives. I would like from other their shirt opinion how the agro waste biorefineries fit in this puzzle.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

This paper is a comprehensive review about bio-based packaging.  The work not only describe agrifood-waste-derived-polymers and packaging, but it provides also a review of manufacturing techniques and economic considerations. LCA complete the paper by pointing out how “sustainability” should be considered from a broad perspective.

The paper is informative, clear and comprehensive.  It can be used to provide the specific knowledge about sustainable packaging and I appreciate that references are well described in the text.  I thank the Authors for this work.

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.docx