Food Packaging and Environmental Development

Abstract: The food packaging industry has developed rapidly. Commonly used food packaging materials include polymers, metals, paper and glass. These food packaging materials have certain environmental pollution in the production process. Incorrect treatment methods after use and microorganisms in the food packaging cause further pollution to the environment. At the same time, excessive food packaging also causes huge environmental resources. damage. In order to coordinate the development of the food packaging industry and the environment, people should pay attention to the clean production of food packaging, develop green food packaging, simplify food packaging, and increase environmental awareness.

Keywords: food packaging; environment; development

The rapid development of the food industry has greatly promoted the development of the food packaging industry. Food packaging has made remarkable achievements in many aspects such as appearance, material, and practicality. The development of the food packaging industry also puts us faced with a grim reality that cannot be ignored: With the increasing consumption of packaged food, the proportion of food packaging in domestic waste is increasing, which not only increases domestic waste. The processing burden, the unreasonable production of some food packaging and the treatment methods after use also caused serious environmental pollution.

1 Types and Characteristics of Food Packaging Materials

Food packaging materials refer to various materials used for food packaging in the food industry. Common food packaging materials include polymers, metals, paper and glass, and ceramics, bamboo, and various composite materials.

Polymer packaging materials include plastics, rubbers, and coatings. Plastics can be divided into two categories: thermoplastic and thermosetting; rubber can be divided into natural rubber and synthetic rubber according to the source of the base material; coatings can be divided into high-temperature film-forming coatings and room temperature film-forming coatings according to the film forming conditions. Resin coatings, organic fluorine coatings, silicone coatings, perchloroethylene coatings, urushiol coatings, and paraffin coatings. Due to its good barrier properties, heat resistance and corrosion resistance, coupled with the characteristics of light weight, ease of use, colorfulness and beautiful appearance, polymer materials have become extremely important food packaging materials and have been widely used. The biggest disadvantage of polymer materials is that most of them are not easily degradable, and incineration produces toxic gases.

Metal packaging materials are commonly used iron, aluminum, stainless steel and various metal alloys. Metal materials have a relatively high mechanical strength, are not only strong, pressure-resistant, non-friable, but also have ductile, seizable, weldable, and bondable processing characteristics, coupled with good barrier properties and airtightness. It also occupies an important position in food packaging materials.

Paper packaging materials have many advantages, such as low price, good protection performance, convenient storage and transportation, easy molding and decoration, no contamination of contents, good recycling performance, easy combination with other materials to further improve and improve the performance of materials, etc. One of the most widely used food packaging materials.

The glass packaging material has good stability, barrier property, hygienic property and preservability, has many advantages such as being not easy to be deformed, easy to achieve sealing of the lid, re-sealing after opening, easy beautification, rich raw materials, low cost, and the like.

2 Food Packaging Produces Environmental Pollution

Pollutants produced by the food packaging industry include sulfur dioxide, chlorine gas, phosgene, formaldehyde, hydrogen fluoride and other gases, and phenols, benzene and styrene. Metal production sites also produce dust. The above substances can cause varying degrees of pollution to the atmosphere, soil and water resources.

Sulfur dioxide is the most important type of atmospheric pollutant. It can be oxidized under the catalysis of metal oxides such as iron, copper, and magnesium contained in atmospheric particulates, and dissolved in rain and snow to generate H2SO3 and H2SO4, thereby making precipitation appear. Acidity, acid rain, serious damage to air, human health and soil. Chlorine not only harms human health, but also enters the plant leaf tissue. It quickly destroys the chlorophyll in the leaf flesh, causing the leaf to appear light brown to dark brown with different colors of lesions, resulting in leaf shrinkage, desiccation, and shedding; in addition, chlorine has Strong pungent odor, if the air reaches a certain concentration, has a great influence on the residents' living environment. More seriously, chlorine gas and carbon monoxide can form more toxic phosgene (COCl2). Phosgene is a highly toxic gas and has a cumulative effect. It stays in the environment of 100 to 300 mg/m3 for 15 to 30 seconds. Can cause severe poisoning and even death. Formaldehyde can coagulate proteins and is genetically toxic to organisms.

Phenol is the simplest kind of phenolic contaminant. Phenol in water is easily oxidized by hypochlorous acid to chlorophenol. This kind of compound has strong irritation and has a great impact on drinking water. The copper and copper dust produced during the mining and smelting of copper can allow copper to enter the air and soil in large quantities. Aquatic organisms can enrich copper. Crops can also absorb copper from the soil through the roots. Part of the copper will eventually pass through the food chain. Into the human body, when copper accumulates in the human body to a certain extent, it can cause harm to the human body; The environmental pollution caused by dust, etc. in aluminum production sites is an important source of aluminum in food and drinking water. Aluminum is toxic to bones. Aluminum is in the human body. Accumulation increases the excretion of phosphorus in the stool. In severe cases, it can lead to phosphorus deficiency, affecting the formation of bone matrix and causing rickets.

3 The use of food packaging pollution of the environment

3.1 Pollution of the Environment after Food Packing Abandoned

Food packaging is urban solid waste, and it is a long-term source of pollution. Untreated or improperly treated, it will cause serious air pollution, groundwater pollution, soil pollution, etc. It will also cause land resources to be occupied by garbage and damage to natural landscape. At present, China's solid waste disposal methods include sanitary landfills, composting, and incineration. Among them, landfill treatment accounts for more than 70%, followed by high-temperature composting, accounting for about 20%, and the incineration treatment method has a very small proportion. Although the waste disposal rate has increased year by year, there is still a wide gap between the requirements for achieving environmental harmlessness.

Landfill disposal refers to the method of selecting suitable natural sites on land or artificially transforming suitable sites to cover waste with soil. However, the landfills in China in recent decades have basically not considered environmental protection measures, let alone environmental standards. The disposal method is the simple stacking of waste and soil cover. This simple treatment method not only provokes a large number of mosquitoes and flies in the summer, but also easily causes the spread of diseases, and releases harmful gases such as ammonia and sulfides. According to statistics, there are already two-thirds of the cities in China that are surrounded by garbage, which has had a bad influence on the cleanliness, beauty, and hygiene of the city.

The process of using microorganisms to degrade organic matter in garbage is called composting. Some simple high-temperature composting technologies are used in small and medium-sized cities. However, due to technical limitations, there are two major problems in the composting products of composting plants: One is that the products are rough, and the compost is mixed with pieces of glass, iron chips, etc. Affecting the application of farmland; Second, the nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium and other nutrients in the product are low in content. When the compost is applied alone, its yield increase cannot be compared with other fertilizers and it is not competitive.

Incineration is an oxidative combustion reaction in an incinerator with excess air and treated garbage. While releasing energy, toxic and hazardous substances in the garbage are oxidized, pyrolyzed, and burned at high temperatures and destroyed. However, it is worrying that some street cleaners lack the awareness of environmental protection. Garbage is often burned in the open air. Large amounts of toxic gases generated by garbage are directly discharged into the air, and the incinerated residues are discarded without treatment.

3.2 Pollution caused by residual microorganisms in food packaging

Residues of microorganisms or food residues carried by the food itself remain in the food packaging waste. There are 10 to 50 microorganisms left on the packaging of fresh foods, of which the most important one is E. coli. Bacteria are not only diverse in variety, but also have diverse physical characteristics. No matter whether there is oxygen or oxygen in the environment, high or low temperature, or acidity or alkalinity, there are bacteria suitable for the environment, and bacteria can not only grow in the environment, but also Some can also produce toxins. Some bacteria can produce spores, such as Bacillus anthracis, which can cause acute infections in humans and animals. Although the incidence is not high, the mortality rate is high if left untreated. In general, Bacillus anthracis can survive in soil for more than a few decades.

3.3 Food Overpacking Causes Huge Destruction of Environmental Resources

Excessive food packaging refers to the fact that, compared to packaged foods, there are too many levels of packaging, materials are inappropriate, structural designs are overdone, surfaces are over-decorated, packaging functions are excessive, and packaging costs are too high. Mainly in the following three types: Luxury packaging, false packaging and collocation packaging. For example, in recent years, over-packing of moon cakes, over-packaging of tea, over-packing of nutritional products, etc., for example, the volume of some moon cake boxes is more than 50 times that of moon cakes. China's food packaging generally adopts raw materials. The sources of packaging materials are mainly wood, petroleum, and steel. These are China's scarce resources. Excessive packaging wastes a lot of valuable resources in China. The massive consumption of wood and other resources directly destroys the environment. Sustainable development. In real life, waste caused by excessive packaging of food can be found everywhere, and the waste of resources caused by excessive packaging of foods is becoming more and more serious as people are increasingly demanding food packaging. While wasting resources, food overpacking has caused food prices to be far higher than the value of the goods because of increased production costs. It also exceeds the affordability of consumers.