At present, there are some flexible packaging enterprises trying to use degradable plastic packaging production, the main problems are:
1. few varieties, small yield, can not meet the requirements of mass production
If base for degradation of materials, fabrics, of course, also need to fully biodegradable material, otherwise, the base can be degraded completely, we can’t take petroleum base of PET, NY, BOPP as fabric to match the material of PLA composite, so the meaning is almost zero, and is likely to be worse, even the possibility of recycling will be indelible. But at present, there are very few fabrics that can be used for composite flexible packaging, and the supply chain is very scarce, and it is not easy to find, and the production capacity is very short. Therefore, it is a difficult problem to find biodegradable fabrics that can adapt to soft package printing.
2. Functional development of the underlying degradable materials
For composite flexible packaging, the degradable material that can be used for the bottom is particularly important, because many packaging functions are entrusted to the bottom material to achieve. But at present can be applied to the composite soft packaging bottom degradable materials, domestic production can be few and far between. And even if some of the bottom film can be found, some of its key physical properties such as tensile, puncture resistance, transparency, heat sealing strength, etc., whether it can match the existing packaging needs is still a relatively obscure unknown. There are related health indicators, barriers, but also to study whether to meet the packaging requirements.
3. Whether the auxiliary materials can be degraded
When fabrics and substrates can be found, we also need to consider accessories, such as ink and glue, whether they can be matched with the substrate and whether they can be completely degraded. There’s a lot of debate about this. Some people think that the ink itself is a particle, and the amount is very small, the proportion of glue is also very small, can be ignored. However, according to the above definition of completely degradable, strictly speaking, as long as the material has not been completely decomposed into easily absorbed by nature, and can be recycled in nature, it is not considered to be truly completely degradable.
4. Production process
At present, most manufacturers, the use of degradable materials, there are a lot of problems to be solved. No matter in the printing process, or in the compounding or bagging, finished product storage process, we need to find out how different this kind of degradable packaging is from the existing petroleum-based composite packaging, or what we need to pay attention to. At present, there is no more perfect control system or standard suitable for popular reference.
Post time: Jul-14-2022