Every year Germany produces 1.7 million tons of bread and pastry for the bin

What can I do with stale bread? Or to be more precise: what should we do with stale bread? In view of current figures published by the WWF (World Wide Fund For Nature) an average of 12% to 15% of the pastry produced in German bakeries and bakery shops go unsold – this corresponds to a loss of approx. 1.7 million tons annually.

So what we need are solutions to ensure that this still edible food is not going to waste. Breadcrumbs and animal feed are not enough here. Some companies are already demonstrating how unsold bread and pastry can be turned into innovative secondary products.   

Such as bread schnapps. Distillery ‘Edelbrennerei Nordik’ located in Lower Saxony uses about 80% of bakery returns for producing bread brandy. Since bread perishes quickly they have installed special storage and cooling logistics.  

However, bread can also be turned into delicious bread dumplings. Product developers Markus Felchner and Udo Rössel came up with an idea and realised it in cooperation with Bakery Lenert in the Saarland region. Here, the dumplings are square and baked in the oven rather than spherical and boiled in water. Pan-fried they are a hearty side dish for veggies, fish or meat. And as sandwiches they are ideal companions for little snacks between meals.

To stop baked goods perishing prematurely and needing to be thrown away unnecessarily they should be protected sufficiently with the right packaging.  

Snack packaging offers hygienic protection against damage and soiling on the shelf. In the pastry segment this primarily applies to ready-to-eat products that have a shelf-life of just a few days as they are packaged in simple plastic film bags.  

This is unlike goods for part-baking. These have to have a clearly longer shelf life – two to three months for the most part. This can only be achieved if there is only very little residual moisture left inside the bread packaging otherwise undesirable mould will form. Very good impermeability to oxygen is ensured by packaging products with a flexible composite film and inert gas – a process called Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP). The high-barrier films suitable for this process are produced on tubular bag or deep drawing machines.     

But bakery products are not all the same. Fruit cake, for example, is rather moist and therefore has to be protected against dehydration. Cookies, on the other hand, must not be exposed to too much humidity. In both cases protection against water vapour is key and can be achieved by means of special barrier films.  

Also worth remembering is that freshly baked bread is often pointed and edgy. This is why any type of packaging used here should not only feature barrier functions but also boast high puncture resistance. Most composite films accept high-quality flexo-printing. And special finishes create paper-like or strikingly matt/glossy surface textures. Each application requires its own matching packaging – thereby protecting products optimally and combating food losses and waste.

But bread is not the only issue. One third of all food produced for human consumption worldwide still perishes or goes to waste – while just under 800 million people are malnourished. The most effective way to address this issue is to tackle the problem from several angles. This is why Messe Düsseldorf has joined forces with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the United Nations Environment Programme (UN Environment) and various figures from business, industry, social and political spheres.  With the SAVE FOOD Initiative they all want to jointly raise public awareness about the fight against food losses and waste and develop counter strategies and solutions. Many of those involved here come from the packaging industry – because packaged food is protected food.