Explore commodity packaging issues and green packaging

First, the problems in the packaging of goods

Among the many factors in the market competition, product quality, price, and packaging are the three main factors. A foreign expert who studies market sales once said: "On the road leading to the market, packaging design is the most important one. The promotion of packaging to the overall image is no less than advertising." Indeed, commodity packaging is used in the purchase of modern commodities. , sales, transportation, storage and other aspects play a very important role. However, while enjoying the benefits and happiness brought about by packaging, people have found that a large number of packaging wastes and disposable domestic wastes and their disposal have caused increasingly serious pollution to the human living environment and become a major public hazard. The most important of these is the "void" packaging and multilevel overpacking.

(a) "Void" packaging

"The goods sell a skin" is almost familiar in the business community. There is a lot of information that shows that consumers have encountered this kind of embarrassment in the process of buying goods. For example, “Chong Chong Xia Cao” with a box of several hundred bucks, and only 20 slim herbs in a large box are empty. The typical phenomenon of packaging. The so-called "void" packaging means that the proportion of the packaged goods in the whole package is very small, and the cavity inside the package is empty, resulting in complete inconsistency between the physical and visual observations in the goods. It mainly utilizes an abnormal behavior that people like to have a generous atmosphere, a great pride and a great respect, and often appears on three-dimensional rigid packaging (non-flexible packaging), such as hard box gift packaging, metal box packaging, Metal cans, among which gift packaging is the most popular. The main theme of the gift packaging "void" is mainly set behind the packaging window and around the upper and lower left and right sides, filled with cheap filling to increase the fullness of the packaging or posing a physical weight, or simply vacant (if the proportion of goods is lighter) . The merchant fixes the contents only at the opening area of ​​the package for consumers to observe when purchasing.

In addition to deceiving the psychology of consumers, NVP packaging also has a negative impact on the social environment. In cities with higher levels of consumption, more high-end commodity circulation makes void packaging the ultimate manifestation of urban pollution [1]. First of all, empty packaging is the biggest waste of resources and energy. Many of these types of packaging are deceptive and over-packaged. Once they are seen by consumers, they will be worthless and become a pile of waste, which will ultimately cause significant waste of resources and energy. Second, empty packaging is the city's source of waste and pollution. After the void packaging is identified as authentic, the most common form is burned or low-priced auctions, especially burned disposal. Due to the variety of materials used in packaging, many plastics and other high-molecular synthetic materials will generate a large number of toxic and harmful gases during the burning process, thus forming a source of pollution in the city. Third, Void packaging violates WTO rules. The WTO rules do not permit empty packaging, and many products cannot enter the international market because of empty packaging. As a result, the product image of a country or region is greatly reduced and the losses are heavy.

(B) Multi-level overpacking

This type of packaging overemphasizes modification and features multiple layers. For instance, the gift boxes for the "moon cakes" are getting more and more attractive and more and more gorgeous. There are wooden boxes, bamboo baskets, paper boxes, and satin boxes. Some of them emboss the vivid patterns on the surface, and some of them use colored porcelain. Made of enough to be comparable to cloisonne; large box sets of small boxes, small boxes and then packaged in multi-level packaging is common. There are similar phenomena in other packaging. Excessive packaging of goods not only increases the production costs, causes the people to spend more money, but also causes great waste of resources and environmental pollution. First of all, the packaging of moon cakes is beautiful and luxurious, but the expensive price is staggering. A box of moon cakes, expensive for hundreds or even thousands of dollars, the price of packaging far exceeds the value of moon cakes, and some even exceed tens or even thousands of times. Second, the wooden boxes and cartons used to package moon cakes are beautiful, but their price is reduced. According to statistics, on average, every 10 million boxes of moon cakes produced will have 600 trees with a DBD of 10 cm. At the same time, there are data that China currently produces 1.2 billion boxed shirts each year, which requires 240,000 tons of paper. If a tree with a breast diameter of 10cm is used as the standard, each 7 trees can produce 1t paper and 1.2 billion sets of packaging boxes. It is equivalent to cutting 1.68 million trees [2]. With only this one, China will have to “wear” a large forest every year. This is just a drop in the ocean. Third, plastic products used for packaging need more than one hundred years to be absorbed by the soil. The environmental pollution caused by these chemical wastes is quite serious. For example, many brands of moon cakes packed with plastic film, each producing at least two non-degradable packages, are thrown into nature, undoubtedly aggravating the white pollution. Those other packaging that had no practical use were eventually thrown into the trash and became an important source of increasing domestic waste. Therefore, restricting packaging has become a worldwide problem.

Second, the concept of green packaging

Although packaging has played a role in protecting, publicizing, and beautifying products, it is a product of very short-term and garbage disposal. With the increase of circulation ratio and the increase of environmental burden, it is also one of the important issues of environmental protection. Was raised from the United Nations Environment and Development Commission’s “Our Common Future” in 1987, and the UN Environment and Development Commission issued the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development and Agenda 21 in June 1992. In the world, a green wave centered on protecting the ecological environment has been set off.

(a) The connotation of green packaging

Green packaging, also known as “Friends of the Environment” packaging or ecological packaging, refers to packaging that is harmless to the ecological environment and human health, can be recycled, recycled, and used for sustainable development. It requires packaging products to be selected from raw materials. The entire process of product manufacturing, use, recycling and disposal should meet the requirements of ecological and environmental protection, including resource and energy conservation, reduction, avoidance of waste generation, easy recycling, recycling Use, can be incinerated or degraded and other ecological environmental protection requirements, that is, the world's industrial developed countries require packaging to do "3R" and "1D" (Reduce reduction, Reuse reuse, Recycle recycling, Degradable degradable) in principle. This means the arrival of a new technological revolution in the packaging industry (solving the disposal of packaging material waste and the development of degradable plastics).

(II) Classification of Green Packages

Green packaging is divided into A grade and AA grade. Grade A green packaging refers to the appropriate packaging of wastes that can be recycled, recycled or degraded, and contain toxic substances within the specified limits. AA-grade green packaging refers to waste that can be recycled, recycled, or degraded, and does not cause harm to the human body and the environment during the product life cycle, and contains toxic substances within the prescribed limits. This classification mainly considers that it is firstly necessary to solve the problem of waste after packaging. This is one of the important pollution issues that are currently under consideration in the protection of the environment in various countries of the world. It is a problem that needs to be solved in the past, present, and future.

(III) Green Packaging System in Developed Countries in the World

At present, many industrial leaders have become increasingly troubled. In 981, the Danish government first introduced the "Container Container Recycling Act" and "Green" in view of the adverse impact of the increase in empty containers for beverage containers. Tax system. Since the implementation of the "Container Packaging Recycling Act" affected the free movement of goods within the European Community and the interests of its member states, a lawsuit concerning the "Danish Bottle" hit the European Court. In 1988, Denmark finally won. In order to alleviate disputes, the European Community held a conference in Berlin in June 1990 to propose the idea of ​​full protection of the environment. The Waste Transport Act was enacted, which stipulated that packaging waste could not be shipped to other countries, and countries should take responsibility for waste.

In the United States, 37 states have established regulations for the management of packaging waste in 1994, and more than 100 recycling and recycling laws have been in force. At the same time, five priorities for waste reduction, reuse, regeneration, incineration, and landfill disposal have been stipulated. Order indicators, in addition, through the legislation to prohibit the import of straw packaging. In Germany, in June 1992, the Decree on the Treatment of Packaging Waste in Germany was published, and the "Circular Economy Law" was formulated. The United Kingdom has enacted the "Packaging Waste Regulations", requiring that 50% to 75% of packaging waste be reused before 2000. It is not difficult to see from this that the implementation of green packaging is an inevitable trend in the development of world packaging [3].

Third, the development of green packaging measures

(I) Actively develop green packaging materials

1. Avoid using toxic materials

The pigments, dyes, and paints used on packaging containers and labels shall be made of raw materials that do not contain heavy metals. The adhesives used as bonding materials should not only be toxic and toxic, but also be easily decomposed during separation.

2. Research and use of reusable and recycled materials

Packaging design should try to use recycled packaging. At present, recycled recycled materials used in the world are mostly recycled paper. Since paper will quickly rot in nature, it has no adverse effect on the natural environment and paper can be recycled. Therefore, the world recognized that paper, paperboard and paper products are green products that meet the requirements of environmental protection. Many international companies now use recycled paper for annual reports and publicity materials production. They use recycled paper to make letter paper and letter paper to reflect their environmental concerns and good corporate image [4]. However, because the paper industry is heavily polluting the environment, and recycled paper made from recycled paper will reduce the quality level of paper, paper packaging is not a “green packaging” material in the full sense.

The packaging of beer, beverages, etc., using glass bottles or aluminum foil, supplements the performance of the paper, and can be reused and recycled completely. Recycling and reuse of glass packaging has great potential. Japan's recycling rate of glass bottles is more than 90%, Europe's recycling rate is 62%, Switzerland is 47%, and China only has about 20%[3]. The use of glass containers combined with increased recycling and reuse is an effective measure. At the same time, for plastics now widely used, if they can overcome the technical difficulties of non-degradable, it may become the most important green material in the new century.

3. Actively develop animal and plant packaging materials

Because animals and plants can basically continue to grow and reproduce, and the large-scale use of plants generally does not harm the environment, ecological balance and maintenance of resources, they are favored by the international packaging market. Such as edible packaging materials, that is, edible polysaccharides or animal polysaccharides as the matrix of edible packaging, mainly starch membrane, modified cellulose membrane, animal and plant plastic film, chitosan membrane, etc. [4]. For decades, the well-known glutinous rice bonbons on packaging of confectionery and corn baking packaging cups for packaging ice cream are the most typical edible packaging. Recently, researchers in Wuhan developed a new type of inner packaging material—the edible packaging film. The product is made from dried wolfberry, potato, broken rice and other raw materials by fermentation into polysaccharides, and then extended into a film derived, with edible, degradable, colorless, transparent, good oxygen barrier and so on. There are also degradable plastics, such as a plastic bag made of starch and synthetic fiber, which was developed in the United States. It can be decomposed into water and carbon dioxide in nature.

4·Disassembly of packaging materials

Disintegration of packaging materials is to use degradable packaging materials. The material can be decomposed and reduced in the natural environment under the influence of light and microorganisms in the soil and water, and finally enters the ecological environment in a non-toxic form and returns to nature. For example, a French dairy product company will use eco-packing boxes made from the mixture of substances extracted from sugar beets and minerals.

If the packaging material is a combination of more than two materials, the most common method is to use a linking agent that is not easily disassembled after assembly and is not easily recycled. In order to disassemble the package easily and to be easily discernible, the design of the disintegration of the material should rely on design techniques to increase the ease of dismantling the packaged composite material. At present, the alcoholic beverage packaging on the Japanese market uses a liner bag box. The packaging consists of a 100% recycled cardboard box and a bag used to contain the beverage. The main purpose is to enable people to easily put the cartons and The bags are separated so that they are easier to handle when recycled [3].

(B) establish an environmentally friendly design ideas

Green packaging includes the two aspects of protecting the environment and reusing resources. In the case that white pollution cannot be resolved in a timely manner and new non-hazardous packaging materials (degradable materials) have not yet been developed, the green packaging design concept is undoubtedly the quickest and most effective method. This idea must be multiple layers of production, life, resources, etc.