Green Packaging Face Interview (Chinese)

The raw materials for papermaking are mainly forest trees. Plastics, metals, and glass are derived from petroleum, natural gas, or coal, iron ore, and quartz stones.

From the point of view of resource regeneration, the forest has unique advantages and good regenerability. The time required for a tree to grow from tree to seed is much shorter than that of oil and ore. It can be said,

Except for forests, whether it is oil, natural gas, coal, iron ore, or even quartz, its resource regenerability is only a theoretical one.

However, this does not mean that the global forest resources can be regenerated and consumed in a balanced manner. The fact is that the consumption of forest trees in the world is far greater than that of newly planted forests. Moreover, secondary forests do not have the ecological effects of virgin forests. In other words, the original forest is also not reproducible. It is also worth noting that forests exist on the surface of the earth and the impact on the human living environment is much more direct and serious than that of minerals.

We cannot deny the fact that any mineral is limited. But at the same time, it cannot be denied that modern civilization is based on mining and petroleum reclaiming. Whether it is oil or iron ore, its opening and use is not exclusive to the packaging industry. In fact, the production of plastic polyolefin raw materials is a by-product of petroleum processing. When plastics are not invented, they can only be used as fuel or directly discharged. The production of plastics can be said to be the point of art of science and technology. It is itself a kind of turning waste into treasure.

However, the known reserves of iron ore, aluminum or quartz, or even coal are very rich, and their impact on the human living environment is far less than the deforestation.

The continuous use of resources

Few people mention this concept. In fact, due to the different characteristics of different materials, the "life cycle" is also different. For example, the aluminum plate can be processed into the same aluminum can after being made into an aluminum can; for example, the glass can be used not only for multiple times after being made into beer bottles, but also can be processed into glass bottles after smashing; and some plastic and paper After the packaging is used, similar products can be made again. However, during the "replication" process, not only will there be losses, but the performance will also be degraded. For example, in the process of repeating papermaking, the fibers become shorter, and the performance of the newly made paper is reduced, and the performance and grade of the original paper can no longer be achieved. Plastics are generally not as good as they were once they are repelletized. Obviously, the more times that can be repeated, the longer the "life cycle" of materials and the greater the contribution to the environment.

Among the four materials, although the resources of paper seem to be the most abundant, the paper's "life cycle" is also the shortest. From this point of view, paper is not more environmentally friendly than other materials.

Contamination from processing

When paper, metal or plastic resins are made from raw materials and reprocessed into paper packaging products, metal packaging containers, plastic packaging products and glass packaging products, not only energy is consumed, but also pollution is generated. Whether a package is environmentally friendly cannot be ignored.

No matter which kind of material, it consumes a lot of energy during the manufacturing process. A lot of wastes are produced in the papermaking process. The formation of acid rain is mainly related to the three wastes produced by papermaking. Last year, China shut down thousands of small paper mills because the wastewater discharged from these small paper mills seriously polluted rivers and lakes. Can not rule out some of the major foreign paper mills have good three waste treatment devices and measures, but in terms of the actual situation in China, among the four kinds of packaging materials, paper manufacturing process is the worst environmental protection. Metal plates also produce three kinds of waste in the manufacturing process, especially waste residue. However, relatively speaking, companies that can manufacture cold rolled sheet or aluminum plate for packaging are very large-scale metallurgical plants. Relatively speaking, environmental protection measures are relatively complete. Similarly, the production of plastic resins can only be completed by large-scale petrochemical companies. Not only are the three resins generated during the synthesis of plastic resins less, but these modern companies also have stricter measures for environmental protection. The production of glass requires a lot of energy, but also produces three kinds of waste, but the degree of harm is not high.

The commonality of these four types of materials is that they all have mature processing technology and can be mass-produced. The difference is that glass does not need to be made into an intermediate product and the final packaged product can be made directly from the raw material.

From paper to paper packaging products, or from sheet metal to metal containers, and from plastic resins to plastic containers, there is not a lot of pollution.

Effect of product processing methods

The choice of different materials and products has different contributions to environmental protection; the same materials, the choice of different processing methods, will also have a great impact on the material's "life."

(to be continued)