Green packaging design scientific development concept (2)

2. Connotation

Green packaging should be: no harm to the ecological environment and human health, recycling, reuse and recycling, can promote the sustainable development of the national economy packaging. In other words, the whole process of packaging products from raw material selection, product manufacturing, use, recycling and disposal should meet the "clean production" requirements for ecological and environmental protection. It includes such contents as conservation of resources, energy, reduction, avoidance of waste generation, easy recycling, recycling, incineration or degradation, and other ecological and environmental protection requirements.

Some scholars proceed from the concept of comprehensive packaging, according to a multidisciplinary approach to the overall analysis of the packaging, the definition of green packaging: human beings to produce the minimum cost of all human packaging products in demand.

Former President of the World Packaging Organization, Townsend, put forward the "3R" principle of green packaging, namely, reduce, reuse (reuse, recycling). Some scholars have suggested that the use of the used goods can be unified. Reclaim, promote the rejection of products without environmental protection concept (Refuse), try to use the connotation of degradable or degradable packaging materials, so the connotation of green packaging becomes “5R+1D”.

The content of green packaging With the advancement of science and technology, the development of packaging will also have new connotations. For example, the term degradable plastics is derived from the special concept of plastic polymer structures, and it is now more popular to promote the use of more "Ecoplatics". Because the traditional sustainable development of oil-based plastics is hampered by the supply of oil, the economic development has deepened the dependence on oil, and the development of the economy has led to more waste plastics forming white pollution. The environmental protection needs to use fully biodegradable ecological materials and materials. Fully biodegradable ecological material technology is currently improving. In accordance with China’s current economic development and its corresponding rate of oil consumption, China’s oil storage will be exhausted in about 16 years. China’s oil supply will increasingly depend on imports, and it has now become the second largest oil importing country, turbulent. The situation in the Middle East has seriously affected the supply of oil. At present, the annual consumption of plastics in China has exceeded 25 million tons, of which packaging accounts for about 6 million tons, and the proportion in the garbage is increasing day by day and it is difficult to handle. Even if half of the plastics are required to be completely degraded, the annual demand will reach 1,250 tons, while in China, less than 100,000 tons of fully degradable ecological plastics are used as raw materials, and the better-performing polylactic acid ecological plastic has not yet been industrialized. The gap is big. Polylactic acid is currently recognized as an ecological plastic that can replace traditional plastics such as PE to a considerable extent, because it can form the ecological cycle of ecoplastics shown in the ecological cycle of cornstarch ecoplastics in Figure 1. However, there are still some limitations in the cost and packaging applications of polylactic acid and other ecological plastics.

Industrial biotechnology will soon become the third wave of development of biotechnology in the world. It is setting off a new revolution in industrial technology on a global scale. It has become the focus of attention and input of governments and industry circles in various countries. The production mode of the chemical industry has begun to shift to a new generation of material processing model that uses bio-renewable resources as raw materials, energy, environmental friendly, and process efficiency. Its core technology is industrial biotechnology. The European Biotechnology Alliance estimates that by 2010, industrial biotech products such as microbial renewable materials will occupy 10% to 20% of the European chemical market. The US National Research Council predicts that by 2020, 50% of organic chemicals and materials will be produced from biomass feedstocks. The United States Department of Agricultural Resources initiated the "Biomass Research and Development-Innovative or Interdisciplinary Technology for the Conversion of Biomass into Fuels and Compounds" plan in 2001. Japan launched a new energy research project called "New Sunshine Project" to study the efficient transformation and utilization of plant biomass. Toyota Motor Corporation of Japan announced in 2003 that "the bio-green industry is an important pillar for the company's future operations," and invested 2.3 billion yen to build a 1,000-ton polylactic acid pilot plant. The development of industrial biotechnology in our country has superior conditions. China's annual total solar radiation is between 3.3x106 and 8.4x106kJ/m2. Biodiversity resources are another important resource advantage in our country. China has a relatively strong base of traditional industrial biotechnology industries. The output of major products such as antibiotics, vitamins, amino acids and organic acids accounts for the top three in the world, and the potential for modern technological transformation is relatively large. China's research capabilities in the areas of genome and systems biology have reached the international advanced level, laying an important foundation for the development of industrial biotechnology in China.

Therefore, we believe that the connotation of green packaging should be "5R+1E", that is, when selecting packaging materials, it should try to avoid or reduce the reduction (Reduction); the used product packaging should be reclaimed (Reclaim); Reuse of recycled packaging; Recycling or recycling of packaging waste into useful materials (Recycle); Promotion of refuse of products without environmental protection concept; Ecological packaging materials ).

To develop the green packaging industry, we must research and solve relevant technologies, standards, policies, regulations, and other issues in accordance with the viewpoint of systems science, covering green packaging design, material selection, processing and manufacturing, circulation management, application promotion, recycling processing, and evaluation systems. , standard signs, policies and regulations, etc.

3. design

As the source of green packaging, green packaging ingredients should be reduced, easily recycled, reused as much as possible, and recyclable, and ecological packaging materials should be given priority in meeting the basic functions of product packaging. For example, the “Packaging and Packaging Waste Directive” passed by the European Community in December 1994 required the publication of directives to limit the amount of per capita annual packaging waste to 50kg or less within 10 years, and to 90% of packaging waste. Recycling measures are applied, and measures are taken to ensure that no more than 10% of the packaging waste remains. Countermeasures include the control of the quantity of packages, the improvement of quality, and the regeneration of packaging waste.

China's green packaging should be designed in accordance with the scientific connotation of green packaging. The hot issues that need to be solved in the design are mainly:

(1) How to formulate laws and regulations that restrict over-packaging? Over-packaging of moon cakes, health products, and certain medicines, as well as deceptive packaging, is a serious problem. There is a high public demand for quick resolution. How to define overpacking is a very complicated issue. It is necessary to take into account all aspects of the Chinese people's consumption habits, technological status, and economic benefits. It is difficult to simply imitate whether certain countries in accordance with the packaging cost and volume exceed a certain percentage to determine whether It is overpacked. For example, if the packaging cost is not more than 15% of the product cost, the large amount of pure PET bottled water and Tetra Pak can't be produced and sold. The packaging volume should not be higher than 20% of the volume of the product as an upper limit, and the common blister-type tablet packaging fails. In short, this is a highly policy-related issue that must be carefully considered and the focus should be on deceptive packaging.

(2) Is it not forbidden for foam snack boxes? The national authorities issued several instructions in the 1990s to prohibit the use of foam and plastic lunch boxes, but the problem has not yet been completely resolved. The key is that the foam plastic lunch box is only 8 cents, and the composite paper lunch box is more than 2 cents. Restaurants and restaurants are naturally not willing to pay more for composite paper lunch boxes. Shanghai has used a method to collect 3 cents to recover processing fees, so that the white contamination of foam plastic lunch boxes is controlled to some extent. Both opinions need to be harmonized.

(3) Expanded polystyrene cushioning materials have been limited in Europe and other countries. Which new type of cushioning material should be used to replace it? Home appliance exporters were first affected by this green trade barrier and started to use green materials such as honeycomb paperboard. Instead of EPS. However, the new buffer material is far more than a kind of honeycomb paperboard. The state should support the industrial development of a variety of green buffer materials with good cost performance, and introduce new mature buffer materials abroad to meet the needs of various industries and industries. For example, corrugated board shaped structures used as cushioning materials for mechanical and electrical products are worthy of carton plant for product epitaxial development. New foam and cushioning materials are worthy of the performance data that companies need to provide products and designs. Plant fiber foaming materials have yet to be industrialized.

(4) What is green packaging printing? Inseparable from packaging. It is an environmental issue caused by printing. Recently, the European Union requires that the concentration of lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated diphenyl ether, and polybrominated biphenyls in the packaging composition must be less than 100 ppm (0.01%), which has begun to receive attention from the packaging industry in China. Some inorganic pigments contain lead, chromium, copper, mercury and other heavy metal elements, which have certain toxicity and cannot be used for printing food packaging. Ethanol, isopropanol, butanol, propanol, butanone, ethyl acetate, butyl acetate, toluene, xylene and other organic solvents are often used in printing inks, which are toxic and flammable, and are not conducive to environmental protection, health, and safety. Although most of the residue can be removed by drying, the residual solvent will migrate into the food and endanger human health. Therefore, water-based or alcohol-based inks and water-based gloss thinners should be used for packaging printing, as well as inorganic substances such as etching liquids and electroplating waste liquids for heavy metal used in the plate making process, photographic film, and offset printing plate developing washing waste. Contains organics that are effectively treated to meet emission standards.

(5) How to develop ecological plastics? Most enterprises in China currently focus on degradable plastics, and as government authorities should guide them in the development of ecological plastics. In view of the fact that polylactic acids and other real ecological plastics are currently expensive, they are difficult to promote in large areas at one time. They should increase investment in industrialization development and take the lead in using eco-plastics in special fields such as the 2008 Olympics to guide the new trend of green packaging. And application.

(6) How to evaluate green packaging? Whether the designed package meets the requirements of green packaging requires a quantitative evaluation method. The Life Cycle As-sessment (LCA) as defined by ISO14040 is considered to be a relatively authoritative assessment method. However, the completion of a green packaging LCA involves the procurement and production of raw materials, the processing and manufacturing of packaging products, the use and circulation of packaging products, the disposal and recycling of packaging, and the reuse or disposal of packaging. Collect all data on air pollution, water pollution, energy consumption, resource consumption, toxic use, radioactivity, noise, recycling costs, recycling costs, landfill costs, comprehensive incineration benefits, and degradation time at each step. And statistical analysis, the workload is very large. The competent government department shall sponsor relevant experts to carry out the practical research and database construction of the LCA evaluation system for the commonly used packaging system, formulate a uniform standard for the environmental pollution of each level of the product in the recycling process of the product, and propose a more complete applicable product for packaging. LCA terms, symbols, parameters, procedures and analysis methods. The China Packaging Federation should carry out training on the LCA-based green packaging design theory of all enterprises and improve the design level of enterprises.

(7) How to grade the green packaging? According to the LCA data, the designed green packaging can be classified in principle. However, the grading standards need to be defined by the competent government authorities to establish relevant green packaging standards. The classification of packaging products produced by an enterprise requires an authoritative evaluation unit to identify it, and then explicitly approve it by that department. The more complicated issues are the weighted treatment of atmospheric pollution, water pollution, energy consumption, resource consumption, use of toxic substances, radioactivity, noise, recycling costs, regeneration costs, landfill costs, comprehensive incineration benefits, and degradation time. Emphasis on degradation is beneficial to paper products and ecological plastic packaging. Emphasizes energy consumption and costs, and is beneficial to traditional plastic packaging. Therefore, there is a comprehensive balanced, scientific and reasonable evaluation scale problem. The summary of green GDP. The concept can be used as a reference, but it is not easy to determine how the pollution consequences are equivalent to the cost.

(8) How to establish China's green packaging logo? China established the "China Environmental Label" in 1994, but there is no special green packaging mark. EU Packaging and Environment