Recyclable Coatings for Multilayer F&B Packaging

Abstract The food industry is adapting to evolving consumer demands for healthy and premium quality food by reducing the adverse effects of food packaging through innovative advancements in active and intelligent packaging technologies. These smart innovations offer diverse and creative ways to enhance food product quality and safety while extending shelf life. Emerging techniques are also improving the passive aspects of food packaging systems, such as thermal stability, barrier effectiveness, and mechanical strength. Notably, the use of plants, biodegradable materials, and nanomaterials in sustainable food packaging helps mitigate its negative environmental impact. By integrating intelligent, environmentally friendly, and active packaging technologies, a multipurpose food packaging system can be developed that maintains the integrity of all its components, representing the pinnacle of technological advancement in food packaging. This article reviews the fundamentals of food packaging systems, recent advancements in various packaging techniques, commercialized patents, future rese... Read More

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Globally, there are only low recycling rates for single-use plastic packaging materials with only 14% of plastic packaging being collected for recycling and only 5% of it successfully recycled into new plastic materials. The recycling of multi-material multilayer plastic packaging is complex since the recycling industry is not able to identify, sort and separate the diverse layers with current standard technologies. The use of post-consumer polyolefins is increasing due to the pledges of multiple organizations to use higher concentrations of recycled materials in packaging. Sustainability in packaging is definitely needed. One way for consumer product companies to reach their sustainability goals is to have their packages made from recycled plastic. There is a wide variety of legislation covering recycled plastics for use in food contact applications. Plastic waste recycling methods associated with single and multilayer polymer systems and their stages are described.

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Packaging is fundamental to maintaining the quality of food, but its contribution with a negative footprint to the environment must be completely changed worldwide to reduce pollution and climate change. Innovative and sustainable packaging and new strategies of reutilization are necessary to reduce plastic waste accumulation, maintain food quality and safety, and reduce food losses and waste. The purpose of this chapter is to present innovations in food packaging for a sustainable and circular economy. First, to present the eco-design packaging approach as well as new strategies for recycled or recyclable materials in food packaging. Second, to show current trends in new packaging materials developed from the use of agro-industrial wastes as well as new methods of production, including 3D/4D printing, electrostatic spinning, and the use of nanomaterials.

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In this work, the use of a recycled mix stemming from the treatment of multilayer aseptic packaging used in the food and beverage industry is proposed as the matrix for short fibre composites reinforced with flax fibres, to generate value-added materials in contrast to the more common end-of-life scenario including energy recovery. This is expected to be a preferred choice in the waste hierarchy at the European level. A commercially available material (EcoAllene) obtained from multilayer packaging recycling was compounded with short flax fibres up to 30 wt.% by twin screw extrusion, with a view to enhancing its poor mechanical profile and broadening its applications. Composites were in depth analyzed by thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry, which highlighted the complex nature of this recycled product, a limited nucleation ability of flax fibres and a lower thermal stability due to the premature degradation of natural hemicellulose and cellulose, though featuring in any case onset degradation temperatures higher than 300 C. Composites' mechanical properti... Read More

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"Renewable and Recyclable Polymeric Materials for Food Packaging" is a new open Special Issue of Materials that will publish original and review papers on new scientific and applied research, and the articles it contains will make a contribution to the discovery and understanding of biodegradable and recyclable materials, their functional properties, characterization and applications [...].

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Nowadays, food packaging technologies are under consistent evolution in response to growing consumer demands for fresh and minimally processed foods with longer shelf life. Unfortunately, in most of the cases, no single packaging material is able to fulfil all the necessary criteria required for an ideal packaging. Multilayer packaging films or coatings are unique and promising solution to most of the pitfalls faced by conventional and advanced packaging systems. These multilayer structures ensure to provide all the essential requirements necessary for an ideal food packaging material by combining different material layers and their functions in a single item. The involvement of nanotechnology in food packaging technology has offered numerous advantages. Recently, multilayer films incorporated with nanostructures have been developed, which show promising application as food packaging materials with improved barrier, mechanical, and thermal properties along with complementing active and intelligent package functionalities. This chapter mainly focuses on the recent developments on nano... Read More

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Multilayer flexible food packaging is under pressure to redesign for recyclability. Most multilayer films are not sorted and recycled with the currently available infrastructure, which is based on mechanical recycling in most countries. Up to now, multilayer flexible food packaging was highly customizable. Diverse polymers and non-polymeric layers allowed a long product shelf-life and an optimized material efficiency. The need for more recyclable solutions asks for a reduction in the choice of material. Prospectively, there is a strong tendency that multilayer flexible barrier packaging should be based on polyolefins and a few recyclable barrier layers, such as aluminium oxide (AlOx) and silicon oxide (SiOx). The use of ethylene vinyl alcohol (EVOH) and metallization could be more restricted in the future, as popular Design for Recycling Guidelines have recently reduced the maximum tolerable content of barrier materials in polyolefin packaging. The substitution of non-recyclable flexible barrier packaging is challenging because only a limited number of barriers are available. In the ... Read More

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Abstract Alternative packaging concepts for two dry, shelfstable food products were evaluated. A tradeoff between recyclability (monolayer materials) and performance (multilayered highbarrier materials) was made for the packaging materials. Caramellized cookies were packaged in flowpacks made of PP film (OTR 1307 cc/m 2 /d, WVTR 5 g/m 2 /d), acrylcoated PVdC/PP film (OTR 21.8 cc/m 2 /d, WVTR 4.2 g/m 2 /d) as a reference material and metallized PP (MPP) film (OTR 31.2 cc/m 2 /d, WVTR 0.4 g/m 2 /d) and stored at 22C and 50% relative humidity. Texture was compromised after 6 months of storage for the former two materials, while the latter provided an extension of textural acceptability. Whole milk powder was packaged in unsealed PE bags as a reference, representing a typical paper bag with a PE liner that is stapled shut without a seal. Alternative packages were sealed PE bags (OTR 1464 cc/m 2 /d, WVTR 3 g/m 2 /d), PE/PA/EVOH/PA/PE (OTR 0.25 cc/m 2 /d, WVTR 0.95 g/m 2 /d) and PA/EVOH/PA/PE (OTR 1.24 cc/m 2 /d, WVTR 8 g/m 2 /d) multilayer bags, and PP/Al/PE (OTR 0.1 cc/m 2 /d, WVTR ... Read More

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This chapter gives a general overview of flexible plastic packaging. It also presents the benefits and limitations of flexible plastic packaging as they are reflected in life cycle assessment studies. Flexible packaging is also compared with rigid packaging. Emphasis is given to the recycling problem of flexible multilayer plastic packaging. Further, it describes the various options of recycling and the waste management hierarchies used by EU and US Environmental Protection Agency.

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Polymer-based multilayer packaging materials are commonly used in order to combine the respective performance of different polymers. By this approach, the tailored functionality of packaging concepts is created to sufficiently protect sensitive food products and thus obtain extended shelf life. However, because of their poor recyclability, most multilayers are usually incinerated or landfilled, counteracting the efforts towards a circular economy and crude oil independency. This review depicts the current state of the European multilayer packaging market and sketches the current end-of-life situation of postconsumer multilayer packaging waste in Germany. In the main section, a general overview of the state of research about material recycling of different multilayer packaging systems is provided. It is divided into two subsections, whereby one describes methods to achieve a separation of the different components, either by delamination or the selective dissolutionreprecipitation technique, and the other describes methods to achieve recycling by compatibilization of nonmiscible polym... Read More

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This chapter highlights key topics that contribute to the progress toward more sustainable packaging for food and beverages and points to the opportunity for packaging to have an added function as a valuable resource that can feed into the production of new products. It reviews the packaging materials and considerations based on their origin of renewable, nonrenewable, or recycled materials. The environmental and social hotspots with packaging can be addressed to help it be effective, efficient, cyclic, and saferesponsible packaging (or more sustainable packaging) is often defined to include the following: (1) being beneficial, safe, and healthy for individuals and communities throughout its life cycle, (2) manufactured using clean production technologies and best practices and (3) physically designed to optimize materials and energy. The traditional waste hierarchy of reduce-reuse-recycle comes into play with designing to address end-of-life opportunities.

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A single material is used rarely alone in the manufacturing of final packages, in particular when speaking of flexible packaging. Various materials can be used in order to assemble a structure with interesting properties (logistic advantages, ameliorated shelf lives of packaged products, opportunities for recycling and environmental impacts). This reflection should address more attention to the possible development of high-performing packages which can extend shelf lives and better protect foods. The most important technologies used to arrange together different materials in order to achieve more performing packagesmultilayer structures, composites, polymer blends and alloysare shortly described in this chapter with emphasis on chemical aspects.

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