The Plastic Footprint of Fruit Packaging: Strategies for Minimizing Climate Impacts via Optimizing Packaging Design and Use

Plastic packaging is unavoidable in the fruit supply chain; yet, its footprint remains a concern. We assessed the plastic footprint of fruit packaging by evaluating the packaging type, size, and polymer composition. CO₂ content was used as a proxy for plastic footprint, reflecting the plastics embodied in packaging and enabling consistent impact assessment. Eighteen fruit varieties were surveyed across U.S. supermarkets, primarily found in five packaging forms: open stock, bagged, boxed, bottled, and wrapped. Smaller packages had a higher CO₂ content per unit weight of fruits, emphasizing the importance of the packaging-to-product ratio. An exponential decline (p < 0.05) was observed between fruit weight and normalized CO₂ content in boxed and bagged packaging. Reducing the package size from 1–2 kg to 0.1–0.25 kg increased the normalized plastic footprint by 98%. Open stock bags had the lowest CO₂ content (2.28 ± 0.02 g/kg of fruit), though often requiring checkout bags that can triple the footprint. Boxed packaging showed the highest footprint (168.53 ± 41.51 g of CO₂/kg), with a polymer content of 49.39 ± 17.72 g of PET/kg, 1.34 ± 0.72 g of PE/kg, 0.26 ± 0.11 g of PS/kg, and 1.58 ± 0.53 g of PVC/kg. These findings highlight the need for mono-material packaging and improved design standards that prioritize the packaging-to-product ratio to reduce plastic footprint in the fruit supply chain.