The mainstream trend of future development of food packaging materials

Posted by sere on November 13th, 2020

Packaging plays an irreplaceable role in providing protection to food, preventing food from being contaminated by external microorganisms or other substances, preventing or reducing food oxidation and other reactions. Packaging is indispensable to human life and is also due to substandard packaging. Has a direct impact on human health. From the establishment of the *** Food Safety Committee on food safety issues at the beginning of this year to the holding of this month’s "Sustainable Development of Premium Packaging" conference, it can be said that this year's major food packaging exhibitions at home and abroad have fixed the theme In terms of "green health", sustainable development has become an obvious trend for food packaging related companies.

  There is currently no fully unified definition of green packaging. Generally speaking, moderate packaging that can be recycled, reused, or degraded, and does not cause pollution to the environment during the entire life cycle of the product, is called green packaging. The most important meaning of green packaging is to protect the environment, but also has the meaning of resource regeneration.

  The data shows that food packaging accounts for 70% of the total commodity packaging, covering the four major packages of paper, plastic, glass, and metal. All of them can find the "carbon footprint" of carbon emissions from their energy and resource consumption. According to statistics, plastic packaging accounted for 54% of the global packaging material sales in 2009. This shows the share of plastics in the packaging market and the development momentum. It also strongly promoted food, daily chemicals and The progress of the pharmaceutical and other industries, and the progress of these industries in turn has further stimulated the market demand for plastic flexible packaging films.

  At the same time, the "Recycling Economy Promotion Law" also made it clear that my country's economic trend in the future will inevitably transition to "reduce" and "resource". With the promulgation and implementation of this law, it will inevitably greatly promote local and all levels of government to unify the decision-making awareness of "recycling development, energy conservation and emission reduction" into the overall regional economic development. The food packaging industry is no exception.

  At present, in order to cooperate with merchants to attract consumers, packaging manufacturers often only pay attention to the beauty and uniqueness of the packaging, while ignoring factors such as whether it is conducive to recycling and easy to disassemble. Some packaging may even endanger the health of consumers. Environmental protection expert Dong Jinshi suggested that packaging manufacturers should actively respond to the *** policy, resolutely implement the "Circular Economy Promotion Law", start with the selection of packaging materials and the design of packaging styles, and truly integrate "energy saving and emission reduction" with "circular economy". The concept is integrated into the production process of packaging products.

  At present, there are still three contradictions in my country's current social and economic environment: the contradiction between corporate goals and circular economy benefits, the contradiction between corporate development and resource conservation, and the contradiction between corporate benefit evaluation and government incentive mechanisms. The resulting "energy saving and emission reduction" and "circular economy" have become more of the slogans of packaging manufacturers without real thinking and implementation. Packaging manufacturers should actively respond to the "circular economy" policy of ***, and implement an extended production responsibility system. In enterprise production, not only consider the source of raw materials in the design and production process, but also consider the energy consumption, environmental pollution during the processing process, and the transportation, storage, loss, and loss of the product during the sales process. Recycling. That is to say, the "Life-Circular-Evaluation (LAC)" process evaluates any product from birth to grave, that is, the enterprise changes from the past "production-consumption" type to the current "resources-products-renewable resources" ".

  Through this smart packaging conference that the author participated in for two consecutive days, the awareness of food packaging safety was re-drawn in the author's mind. As the outerwear of food packaging, especially the safety of packaging materials, it is directly related to the safety of the food. In general, food packaging companies should develop in the following directions when implementing sustainable development: safety-to achieve double QS of food and food packaging; transparency-to develop and produce colorless, transparent or translucent packaging products, Facilitate waste recycling; reduction-packaging materials should be as thin and light as possible; resource-recycling of existing higher-value packaging products; harmless-proper disposal of packaging waste ; Industrialization-enterprises themselves or entrust others to recycle their products and incorporate them into the chain of circular economy; internationalization-reduce trade frictions caused by export issues by learning other advanced packaging industry research results.

  In short, the main trend of the future development of food packaging materials is functionalization, environmental protection, and simplicity. Aseptic packaging adopts high-tech and molecular materials, fresh-keeping function will become the focus of food packaging technology development, non-toxic packaging materials will become safer, plastic packaging will gradually replace glass products; composite flexible made of packaging materials such as paper, aluminum foil, and plastic film The packaging bag will be optimized and multifunctional. The acceleration of the pace of social life will make fast food packaging face huge development opportunities. The food industry is a sunrise industry in the 21st century. Food packaging materials are developing at a rapid pace. The food packaging materials field will certainly be able to seize this business opportunity to develop and grow.