Eco-friendly packaging options are booming. Among the latest developments, good natured Products, a North American leader in plant-based products, is pleased to announce it has filed for patent protection of its novel tamper-evident design, GoodGuard™, optimized for compostable and biobased materials and only available from good natured.

This unique US patent pending packaging innovation comes at a time when food safety and chain-of-custody security is at an all-time high and expected to grow in importance given the proliferation of grocery and restaurant delivery and take-out industries, like Uber Eats, Instacart and Door Dash. California passed a bill in 2020, requiring restaurants to use tamper evident packaging when using third-party food delivery services. The company anticipates more states to follow and will be poised to offer this earth-friendly solution when the market needs it the most.

GoodGuard™ dual-sided tamper evident containers will be available in both commercially compostable PLA and curbside recyclable Bio-PET, both of which make use of renewable, plant-based materials to deliver an industry leading and exclusive assortment of tamper evident food packaging in the US and Canada.

These multi-purpose tamper evident containers will be available in 6 versatile sizes including 8, 12, 16, 24, 32 and 48oz and have all the features that good natured® is known for including durable plant-based materials, leak resistance, stackability, and enhanced product visibility. In addition, this US patent pending design includes an intuitive feature with no tear-away strips or small pieces that can escape waste/recycling streams to accumulate in land and marine environments.

“I am particularly proud of our R&D and Engineering team at good natured and their passion to create real-world solutions that meet the needs of both the environment and our customers,” says Paul Antoniadis, chief executive officer of good natured. “By developing a wide assortment of high frequency products and packaging, we’re able to drive out the adoption of renewable, plant-based materials more quickly than if we focused on a single niche. Ultimately, it’s less risky for our business model and more beneficial for the environment.”

With the acquisitions of Shepherd Thermoforming, IPF and Ex-Tech Plastics, good natured’s growing technical team now includes in-house expertise in plant-based materials, tooling technology and emerging processing capabilities, explains Michel Labonte, CTO at good natured.

“Our technical team loves a good challenge and developed an innovative new packaging design and processing technique that takes into account the technical specifications of PLA to deliver a strong, safe packaging solution that’s made from plants, not petroleum,” Labonte says.

5 Reasons Why

We’ve all heard about tamper evident packaging for the medicine cabinet, but is it really necessary when it comes to food packaging?

Rather than make the choice more overwhelming, good natured shares a few simple tips you might want to consider in deciding if it’s right for your business.

1. Your Products Pass Through Lots of Hands Before Arriving at Their Final Destination
Your business is your baby and making sure what you’re selling is fresh and safe for your customers is always extremely important. If you’ve got oversight of your supply chain from production to retail shelf, tamper mechanisms might not be as big of a concern. But if your products are passing through lots of hands along the way, you might want to consider adding a layer of security to ensure no one gets access till they land in your customers’ bellies. An additional benefit is that your retailers will have confidence that your product is ready to go.

2. You’re Not Able to Guard Your Products on the Retail Shelf
Super busy running between food prep and front of house? If you’re leaving stuff out, you want to make sure that there aren’t any sticky fingers getting in when you’re not looking. If a package looks like it’s been opened, you can’t be confident selling it, and no customer will pick it up, which leads to food waste, which we’re all trying to manage effectively.

3. The Offline Methods of Making a Tamper Evident Package are Inefficient
Maybe you like the labels on your package, but maybe it adds a step to your production process and is slowing you down. What if you could have the package and the tamper evident mechanism in one single step? If that delivers big time savings for you, Simply Secure packaging might be a good investment for your business.

4. Labels Are Covering Up All Your Gorgeous Goods
Like we mentioned above, we know lots of food producers and retailers who make it clear to customers no one’s been handling the food by adding a label that secures the package opening. If this is efficient and you need to display a lot of information on a label, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with this method. However, if you’re finding your products are hidden under a carpet of labelling and want to show them off more, you may want to consider letting the package do the securing instead of a big label. Also note that compostability and recyclability can be severely impacted by labels so this might be another reason to consider making those less prominent.

5. Your Customers Are Asking For It
Last but certainly not least, maybe you’re able to keep an eye on things from production all the way through to retail sales. And maybe you’re quite happy with your packaging and labels, thank you very much! But what if you’re getting questions from customers about food safety and what you’re doing to reduce the risk of tampering? In this case, even if none of the other reasons apply, you might still want to consider tamper evident packaging to build confidence in your brand and reputation.

Convinced that tamper evident packaging might be right for you, but not sure about all the different material choices? good natured gives you better security and lets you do something better for the planet, all at the same time, according to the company, and its Simply Secure tamper evident packaging is made from 99% annually renewable, plant-based materials and no BPAs, phthalates, or other chemicals.