Green packaging (on)

"Green Packaging", as the popular term for environmentally friendly packaging materials and products, is being accepted by the majority of users, but there are also many misunderstandings in practice. To develop "green packaging" and reduce the pollution of packaging waste to the environment, we must start from the source of the choice of packaging materials, select the appropriate processing method, and formulate a reasonable policy for the development of the industry. Only in this way can the problem of environmental pollution from packaging waste be truly contained.
What is "green packaging"
"Green packaging" refers to packaging products that have no or little environmental pollution during production and processing, are safe and sanitary during use, and are harmless to the environment during waste disposal. "Green packaging" includes three major aspects: material selection, product processing methods and waste disposal. "Green packaging" comes from "white pollution." The so-called "white pollution" mainly refers to the destruction of packaging waste to the environment, because most of the packaging is white or colorless. However, in actual life, many people have such deviations in the understanding of "green packaging."
Misunderstandings in the understanding of green packaging Many people think that the packaging that waste can easily handle is "green packaging." "PVC is environmentally friendly because it generates harmful gases, and paper packs are burned without the generation of harmful substances. Therefore, consumers and non-professional media reporters often judge whether or not the materials are conducive to environmental protection according to their own common sense." . A typical example is: All paper packaging is labeled as "environmental protection", which is a very harmful trend.
Other misconceptions about "green packaging" include: "Green packaging" is a new form of packaging; "green packaging" can reduce costs; "green packaging" can form a new large industry.
The material selection of "green packaging" is fundamental. Paper, plastic, metal and glass are the four major packaging materials and cover almost all types of packaging products. Comparing the environmental performance of different materials should be considered from several aspects such as the recyclability of resources, the continuous use of materials, the energy consumption and pollution of materials processing, and processing costs.
Resource Renewability and Continuing Use of Materials The raw materials for papermaking are mainly woods, plastics, metals, and glass, which are extracted from petroleum, natural gas, or coal, iron ore, and quartz minerals.
From the perspective of resource regeneration, the forest has unique advantages and good reproducibility. The time it takes for a tree to grow from seedlings to trees is much shorter than that of oil and ore. It can be said that in addition to forests, whether it is oil, natural gas, coal, iron ore, or even quartz, its resource renewability is only a theoretical one. However, this does not mean that the global forest resources can be regenerated and consumed in a balanced manner. The fact is that the consumption of forest trees in the world is far greater than that of newly planted forests. Moreover, secondary forests do not have the ecological effects of virgin forests. In other words, the original forest is also not reproducible. It is also worth noting that forests exist on the Earth's surface, and the impact on the human living environment is much more direct and severe than that of minerals.
We cannot deny the fact that any mineral is limited. But at the same time, it cannot be denied that modern civilization is based on mining and petroleum exploitation. Whether it is oil or iron ore, its mining and use is not exclusive to the packaging industry. In fact, the production of plastic polyolefin raw materials is a by-product of petroleum processing. When plastics are not invented, they can only be used as fuel or directly discharged. The production of plastics can be said to be the point of art of science and technology. It is itself a kind of turning waste into treasure. However, the known reserves of iron ore, aluminum or quartz, and even coal are very abundant. The exploitation itself has a much smaller impact on the human living environment than the deforestation.
The energy consumption and pollution generated during the processing process will not only consume energy but also cause pollution when paper, metal or plastic resins are made from raw materials and then processed into paper packaging products, metal packaging containers, and plastic packaging products and glass packaging products. Whether a package is environmentally friendly cannot be ignored. (To be continued)