Avoiding food waste with award-winning plastic caps

Iranpolymer/Baspar  Luxembourg-based United Caps, a manufacturer of caps and closures, and UK startup Mimica have developed a recyclable, plastic cap with the aim of reducing food waste.

Called the Bump Cap, the bottle closure embeds a food-safe, plant-based gel technology that is activated when the beverage is first opened. Without any physical contact with beverage contents, it uses time and temperature to accurately measure when the beverage spoils. Once the beverage begins to degrade, bumps occur on the top of the cap, giving a tactile indicator of freshness.

In a consumer trial of 33 households, the Bump Cap was added to bottles of orange juice. The Bump Cap allowed 97% of the households to enjoy their orange juice beyond the current expiry advice, with 28% of people reporting an extension of use of five days, and 12% of six days.

The innovation has now been awarded gold at the inaugural Save Food Design Awards held at the Shanghai World of Packaging event, which took place between Nov. 22 and 24. The intelligent freshness indicator is designed to change the way people think about what a cap can do and how they can actively fight food waste.

The technology was originally inspired by the fact that printed dates are not accessible to people with visual impairments and that a label that changed its texture if the contents were spoilt would be more useful for everybody.

sustainableplastics