Food packaging plays an irreplaceable role in protecting food from contamination by external microorganisms and foreign substances, as well as preventing or reducing food oxidation and other deteriorative reactions. It is indispensable to human life. However, unqualified packaging also poses direct risks to human health.
From the establishment of the State Council Food Safety Commission at the beginning of the year to the recent conference on sustainable development of high-quality packaging, major domestic and international food packaging exhibitions have centered on the theme of “greenness and health”. Sustainable development has become an inevitable trend for food packaging enterprises in the future.
Currently, there is no unified official definition for green packaging. In general terms, green packaging refers to moderate packaging that can be recycled, reused, regenerated or biodegraded, and causes no pollution to the human body and the environment throughout its entire life cycle. Its core connotation lies in environmental protection, while also realizing resource regeneration and sustainable utilization.
Statistics show that food packaging accounts for 70% of total commodity packaging, covering four major packaging materials: paper, plastic, glass and metal, all of which generate carbon footprints through energy and resource consumption. As early as 2009, plastic packaging accounted for 54% of global packaging material sales. This data fully demonstrates the dominant market share and strong development momentum of plastic packaging. Plastic flexible packaging has greatly promoted the progress of the food, daily chemical and pharmaceutical industries, and in turn, the development of these industries has further stimulated the market demand for plastic flexible packaging films.