Frequently Asked Questions

There are hundreds of unique food packaging materials available on the global market. Due to data limitations, we have prioritized many of the most commonly used materials to include as generic products in the current version of the UP Scorecard. Multiple new and novel alternative materials are also now entering the market – many of which are complex plastics or multilayer packaging all containing different base polymers, additives, and relying on diverse manufacturing processes. The UP Scorecard is a work in progress and is currently in a beta stage. As more information on these novel materials are made publicly available, we hope to be able to incorporate more of them into the UP Scorecard in future versions of the tool.

Nevertheless, you do have the possibility to create new, customized products based on the materials that are available in the UP Scorecard. This allows you to assess and compare new products along with those already existing in the tool.

Also, we encourage purchasers to use the general principles captured by the UP Scorecard when discussing with suppliers about their products’ material sustainability and as a reflection of where the market demand is heading.

The UP Scorecard measures commonly used foodware and food packaging products with a coherent method to provide companies with the information needed to make sustainable purchasing decisions.

• It addresses the need for a consistent and comprehensive way to assess different sustainability impacts of foodware and food packaging products.
• It provides an easy way for food industry and service professionals to make informed decisions about the environmental and human health impacts of the foodware and packaging products they purchase.
• It enables users to determine which options offer the strongest protection for the environment and human health.

From an environmental and health perspective, reusables are shown to be generally preferable to single-use materials. Compared to the manufacturing of new products from virgin materials, reuse helps in most cases to reduce resource extraction, energy use, and waste generation. Even if recycling is available for single-use materials, the reduction in impacts achieved by using reusables is usually much higher. However, reusables only achieve their fullest potential if they do not include chemicals of concern, are reused as many times as possible, and contain recycled content where possible.

One of the design goals of the UP Scorecard is to advance transparency about the chemicals used in food packaging. As explained more thoroughly in the tool’s methodology, the chemicals on the Food Chemicals of Concern (FCOC) List are harmful chemicals known to have been intentionally used or present in food contact materials.

In the current version of the tool, a generic approach is used and gives all materials for which there is no publicly available and detailed information the worst score. As every food packaging article can be produced differently using various chemicals along the supply chain, it is assumed that all products contain these harmful chemicals until proven otherwise. If a user has information that chemicals of concern on one or more of the three tiers of the FCOC list are not present in a specific product, they can update this setting manually for each product to improve the scoring. This also takes into account the quality of this claim (e.g. self-declared, supported by a third-party certification, etc).

A goal for the tool is to encourage producers of specific products to provide chemical information directly to their business customers down the supply chain. They could then potentially leverage the information for product selection or to better inform their own customers about the safety of the packaging and foodware in use.

No. The UP Scorecard only considers the food packaging article itself. It does not include the secondary (or tertiary) packaging used to transport these articles.

Not yet, but this is an interesting feature we are thinking more about!

Currently, the UP Scorecard does not collect or provide information about the financial costs of the various products or provide links to products available on the market. In future updates, we are considering linking to available products and/or including information about average purchasing prices.

The current version of the UP Scorecard is intended for food packaging procurement professionals working in the field. While it is still freely accessible to consumers and available to help them compare packaging options and understand their choices, consumers are not currently the primary target audience. In the future, additional simplifications to the user interface and communications aimed at educating the general public could also be developed to better engage with them.