Edible Packaging Selection Employing Hybrid CRITIC and TOPSIS Method

Abstract

Nations are under constant pressure to reduce the increasing amounts of food packaging waste generated across the world, as the demand and supply patterns for food across the world are expected to tremendously rise with the increasing population levels across the globe. However, the research focus in the domain of food packaging mainly concentrates on the usage of advanced technologies or implementation of atmospheric controls within the packaging, to protect food and prolong the shelf life of the foods to facilitate environmental impact reductions through food waste reductions, with little focus on the development of alternatives such as edible films, that can further facilitate significant reductions within the environmental pollution levels generated from food packaging wastes. Additionally, research concentrating on edible films resulted in the formulation of several biocomposites developed from alternative biopolymers i.e., polysaccharides (glucose derivatives), proteins (animal or vegetable derivatives), etc., exhibiting significant differences corresponding to physical, mechanical, optical, thermal, chemical, and barrier properties, necessitating the application of Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Methods (MCDM) towards the selection of an optimal biocomposite for edible film preparation. Therefore, this study aims at employing a Hybrid MCDM method formulated from CRITIC (Criteria Importance through Inter- Criteria Correlation) and TOPSIS (Technique by Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution) methods, to facilitate the selection of an optimal green biocomposite sample from a set of film samples exhibiting different properties.