Packaging Weight, Filling Ratio and Filling Efficiency of Yogurt and Relevant Packagings Depending on Commercial Packaging Design, Material, Packaging Type and Filling Quantity

Yogurt is a diverse dairy product category. It is available in different packaging designs made of different materials. To identify potential for improvement for these packagings, a better understanding about used materials and packaging efficiencies is necessary. For this study, 150 dairy products and some yogurt relevant desserts were bought from various supermarkets, street markets and discounters in the Munich region (Germany) in spring 2022. Commercial types of packaging are cups, buckets, pouches, bottles, glass packagings and bricks. The filling ratio of most packagings is above 70%, the rest of the volume is headspace. Poly(1-methylethylene) (PP) and poly(1-phenylethene) (PS) dominate as main materials for the different types of packaging. For bottle packagings, poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) and polyethene high-density (PE-HD) are used. Interestingly, poly(lactic acid) (PLA) is not found. Closures (caps) are responsible for 5 to 30% of the total packaging weight. Typical filling efficiencies are 20 to 40 g food product packaged in one gram of packaging material. For glass packagings, the values are 1.5 to 2 g food product packaged in one gram of packaging material. Therefore, plastic packaging results in an at least ten-times lower packaging use per unit of food, at single use packagings. With increasing product weights, we observe a tendency towards higher packaging efficiencies. By using paper/carton wrapping at cups, plastic use is reduced for the whole packaging.