الخميس، 1 مايو 2014

The Quest For Environmentally Friendly Food Packaging

By Eloise Hewitt


Having a meal is an important element of human livelihood. The meals need to be healthy and should not pose any risk to life. It is therefore important to maintain high hygienic practices through environmentally friendly food packaging. There are many options when it comes to this. Unfortunately, most of the choices made lead to massive pollution risking the very lives of those who use them.

The environment only supports life because of the availability of oxygen. This should be kept in constant and sufficient supply if people were to be assured of their survival. Non-biodegradable materials pose untold danger to the atmosphere. These include plastics and glasses. Since they cannot decay, they form heaps that become a nuisance as they cannot be disposed.

Short term or long term effects are possible depending on their nature. Within a short period of garbage accumulation, children throng the heaps to play not knowing the repercussions that can result from that. The devastating effect is illnesses and complications, some of which are hard to cure. On the other side of the continuum lies environmental degeneration, climate change and the depletion of the ozone layer, credit to fumes released into the atmosphere when throwing away chemicals.

This is thus the rationale behind the safe handling of edible materials. When wrapping them for sale it is good to consider the duration it might take before they are consumed. Those that will not take too long before being used need to be kept in a way that the wrapping material is not wasted. It is also good to use products made of paper as paper can easily be recycled.

There are some instances when materials like plastic and rubber cannot be avoided. In such circumstances, precaution needs to be taken so as not to overuse them. Every company should have a waste management policy that encourages the consumers of their goods to take back the wrappings for recycling. Incentives and other promotional goodies can work well in this direction.

Canned foods are normally kept for a long time in metallic or plastic containers. When opened and used, people tend to throw them away anyhow. This this should not be the case. Instead, proper strategies for disposal should be laid. The packages once used need to be disposed of safely. In most cases there are dust bins where such can be thrown and later picked the right authorities that will definitely know where to place them.

Environmental friendliness also involves the health of the air that we breathe. When packaging, take care of the preservatives that are used. Some of these preservatives and food colors can be fatal. There is need to conduct thorough laboratory testing and analysis in order to come up with safe products. Written papers should not be allowed contact with the edible products. The ink contains some chemicals that even in small doses, are not fit for human consumption.

Our desire of being creative and have attractive covers for our products thus needs not to override the requirement to comply with laid down health regulations. Of utmost importance is to beware of the chemicals we release into the environment as these later become a stumbling block in terms of diseases and other complications.




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