While packaging promotes the development of the commodity economy, the harm it causes to the environment is also becoming increasingly serious. Statistics from 2005 show that the annual output of solid waste in cities at or above the county level in China is approximately 200 million tons, while in the United States it is about 1.5 billion tons and in Japan it is around 50 million tons. Among them, packaging waste in developed countries accounts for about one third of the total garbage volume, while in China it accounts for about one tenth, that is, it reaches 20 million tons annually. According to a survey in Japan: plastic accounts for 37.8% of the total packaging waste, paper 34.8%, glass 16.9%, and metal 10.5%. Today, with the rapid development of modern logistics packaging, the proportion of paper-plastic packaging waste is increasing. Based on the current degradation rate of plastics in nature, the cities we live in and their surrounding environments will soon be surrounded by packaging waste such as plastics.
Therefore, while humans are packaging products, they should pay more attention to the protection of the ecological environment. They should shift from merely addressing the most basic functional needs of human beings to meeting the requirements of all aspects of the human living environment conditions. Only in this way can a symbiotic and harmonious relationship be ultimately established between product packaging and the products themselves and people as well as the environment. The packaging industry should strive for low energy consumption and high efficiency, ensuring that products are properly packaged while doing a good job in the recycling, reuse, degradation and other appropriate treatments of waste packaging.
When it comes to food packaging, the first step is to properly position the product and packaging, avoiding flashy but impractical packaging. High-tech packaging technologies and high-performance packaging materials should be given priority. Under the premise of ensuring the use value of the commodity, the amount of packaging used should be reduced as much as possible and the reuse rate should be increased to lower the overall packaging cost. Secondly, efforts should be made to vigorously develop green packaging, ecological packaging and degradable packaging, and pay attention to the recycling, reuse and degradation treatment of packaging waste. For instance, the use of environmentally friendly materials such as sugarcane pulp tableware, which are derived from renewable plant fibers and are fully biodegradable, as well as new paper-plastic composite packaging like water-coated paper cups, which are coated with water-based barriers, can be composted at home, are recyclable, and can be heated in a microwave oven It can effectively reduce the long-term pollution of the environment caused by traditional plastics. Only by promoting such environmentally friendly packaging materials and strengthening the classification, recycling and resourceful treatment of packaging waste can the pollution and ecological damage caused by packaging waste to the environment be minimized.
