Australian team wins international prize for sustainable packaging invention

A Monash University team has won a prize for innovation at the global WorldStar Student Awards, developing a fibreboard packaging product using over 30 per cent peanut husks. 

The group was one of seven Monash teams entered by the Australian Institute of Packaging into the WorldStar competition, which received over 300 submissions.

The team of Caterina Palma, Sherlyn Marvella and Tamanna Kibrea — from the New Frontiers Program at Monash Food Innovation — worked with food company Camel. Their prize-winning packaging product is partly made of peanut husks. (Camel uses peanuts as an ingredient in its energy balls, with the shells and hulls a by-product.)

“To have our concept judged and recognised on the global stage makes all of our hard work and ambitions for packaging in the future worth it,” said Palma. 

“We are excited to see our peanut by-product fibreboard concept potentially being introduced and used in the future of sustainable packaging.”

The packaging (pictured) is also 100 per cent compostable.

The student competition is run by the World Packaging Organisation, open to undergraduate and postgraduates, and designed to encourage their talents and “innovative ideas and thinking in the field of packaging.”

Picture: supplied

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