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.