Antioxidant additives based on natural bioactive free radical scavengers incorporated into food contact compliant nanoclays have shown high effi- ciency in the scavenging of free radicals once incorporated into packaging plastics. The natural bioactive free radical scavengers also show no toxicity, in contrast to traditional antioxidants. Oxygen scavengers can also be very efficiently incorporated into LDPE, HDPE and PET, and their impacts on oxygen scavenging, colour and transparency can be tailored. Both systems described are alternatives to current passive and active packaging materials to reduce oxidation of food products. The incorporation of silver-containing nanoclays into a PLA matrix generated very efficient antimicrobial com- posites, the antimicrobial activity being higher when silver was present in its ionic form. There were differences in mechanical, barrier and optical performance as well as oxygen-scavenging performance between the various nanocomposites described in Section 4.3 depending on the clay type and the iron-based chemistry used. Materials compositing to improve mul- tiple functionalities in plastics (i.e. bringing both physical reinforcement and active performance) is one of the most innovative prospects in packaging applications for foods and beverages. The technologies discussed in sections 4.2, 4.3 and 4.4 have either recently received approval by bodies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Food and Drug Administra- tion (FDA) and the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) for use in food packaging applications or approval is being sought.