Food packaging increasingly sustainable
With food, packaging fulfills an indispensable task. The material required for this has now been greatly reduced by technological advances. Without packaging, nothing is possible with food. They protect their contents against harmful influences and guarantee a longer shelf life as well as food safety. These important functions have meanwhile fulfilled modern packaging materials with significantly less material input than just a few years and decades ago. This is how packaging designers have succeeded in developing packaging made of thinner and thinner material. At the same time their protective function has increased. The company for packaging market research (gvm) reports that the consumption of plastic packaging is 1991 percent lower compared to the state of the art of 35. According to IK Industrievereinigung Kunststoffverpackungen, packaging became 25 percent lighter over the same period. By increasing the material efficiency of plastic packaging since 1991 2013 has been able to produce about 2,6 million tons of CO2Saved, reports the GMM.
This was made possible by the reduction of wall and film thicknesses, better material properties and optimized shaping and processing techniques. Material savings could be realized despite increased demands on the packaging, such as reclosability and portionability. The same applies, for example, to beverage cans made of tinplate. They're thinner by 60 percent today than 1974.
