How to Put Green Packaging into Practice

The green packaging, often called the environmental friendly packaging, refers to the package which is harmless to the ecological environment and human health, can be reused and regenerated, and conforms to the sustainable development policy. Its concept has two meanings, one is to protect the environment, the other is to save resources, and neither can exist effectively without the other. Then how to put the theory into practice?



1. Usage of paper material The paper packaging is environmental friendly because of its ingredient, that is natural plant fiber, which will soon rot in nature. The advantages of pulp molding products, besides light in weight, cheap and shockproof, they also have good breathability for food preservation. In the circulation of International commodities, paper material is widely used for packaging of eggs, fruit and glass products that are fragile and easy to be damaged.

2. Reusage of reproducible packaging materials The land and forest is the basis of ecological balance. Indiscriminately deforestation will bring immeasurable disaster to human society. According to the current situation, reusable packing material should be taken into consideration. For instance, the glass bottles which used to hold beer, drink and soy sauce can be used repeatedly. The physical method is to dispose the products without any residues, and the processed material can be manufactured again.

3. Edible packaging material It is a good method to deal with the problems between environment and food packaging waste. A company in Australia has developed a kind of edible potato packaging. After eating potato chips, people can also eat the package. Typical edible packaging material such as the packaging for candy and ice-cream may be familiar with people.

4. Biodegradable material Biodegradable material has the functions and features of traditional packaging materials. It can be directly degraded with the effect of ultraviolet light and microorganism in soil and water.

The History of Packaging

Packaging to goods just like clothes to people. Without packaging, goods cannot be well preserved and will be easy to be damaged by outside force. And the importance of it had already been realized by the early people,from taking some plants or metals as the materials to pack, to the new-style materials such as the most popular one in contemporary society, the green packaging, the history of packaging has not only shown human's wisdom but also the progress in people's views and values. Even the container for perfume has been made in eco perfume bottles.



In general, original pack, traditional pack and modern pack are the three periods for packaging.

During the period of original pack, plants were used firstly as the materials of packages. The end products including baskets of reeds, wineskins, wooden boxes, wooden barrels and woven bags. The study on original pack is one of the important issues in archaeology.

About 5000 BC, humans began to enter the Bronze Age. And 4000 years ago in Xia Dynasty, Chinese people had been able to smelt bronze, while in Shang and Zhou Dynasty, bronze smelting technology had further developed.In 3000 BC, the ancient Egyptians had begun the glass blowing. Thus, the use of glass, wood and metal in all kinds of packaging containers have had one thousand years of history. The earliest recorded use of paper for packaging dates back to 1035, when a Persian traveler visiting markets in Cairo noted that vegetables, spices and hardware were wrapped in paper for the customers after they were sold. In the 15th century, typography appeared in Europe, from then on, packing and printing began to develop. In 16th century, ceramic industry had thrived in Europe. With the establishment of the first glass factory in United States, packaging began to transit from traditional form to modern form.

Since the 16th century, due to the rapid development of industrial production, especially the industrial revolution in the 19th century in Europe, the development of packaging industry had been greatly promoted.Thereby, the foundation for modern packaging industry and packaging technology's progress had been laid.

In the 20th century, new technology changes with each passing day. Polyethylene, paper, glass, aluminum foil, plastic, composite materials and other packaging materials are widely used. Increasing maturity can be found in technologies from aseptic packaging, shockproof packaging, anti-theft packaging to composite packaging. In the late 20th century, international trade is growing vigorously. Electronic and laser technique are widely used to realize the mechanization and automation of production.