This year is the first decade of the new millennium and today is the last day of the first decade of 2010. Traditionally, after the family reunion dinner, the Chinese family sitting together and watching the “Spring Festival gala evening” and waiting until the new year arrives…
Happly New Year in advance and a prosperous new decade… for more info of our business please visit http://wuxiglory.en.made-in-china.com, nice weekend to all!
Regards,
David King
In rotational molding, plastic in powdered form is placed inside a hollow mold. The mold is closed, and then spun on two perpendicular axes, simultaneously. Centrifugal force distributes the powdered resin, throughout the mold. Next, the mold is heated, while still spinning, to melt the plastic. Spinning continues as the mold is cooled to solidify the plastic object. When it has cooled sufficiently, the mold is stopped, opened, and the item removed. For many objects, such as containers, cutting in openings or other features is the next step. Rotational Molding has some use for forming large bulk containers and also for forming the round balls used in dispensing containers for roll-on-deodorant, but otherwise is used very little in packaging.
FUNCTIONS OF PACKAGING
Packaging performs a series of disparate tasks: it protects contents from contamination and spoilage, makes it easier to transport and store good and provides uniform measures of contents.14 By allowing brands to be created and standardized, it makes advertising meaningful and large-scale distribution possible. Special kinds of packages with dispensing caps, sprays and other convenience features make products more usable. Packages serve as symbols of their contents and a way of life and, just as they can very powerfully communicate the satisfaction a product offers, they are equally potent symbols of wastefulness once the product is gone.
A package must do three things: it must protect the contents, promote the product and inform the consumer. A fourth function, convenience, is closely related to promotion since convenient packages promote sales.10
The functions of a food package were defined by the Codex Alimentarius Commission in 1985 as follows:
“Food is packaged to preserve its quality and freshness, add appeal to consumers and to facilitate storage and distribution.”
As succinct as this definition might be, it is inadequate for those responsible for designing for designing and developing food packages. Four primary functions of packaging have been identified: containment, protection, convenience and communication. These four functions are interconnected and all must be assessed and considered simultaneously in the oackage development process.
Introduction to Food Packaging
In today’s society, packaging is pervasive and essential. It surrounds, enhances and protects the goods we buy, from processing and manufacturing, through handling and storage, to the final consumer. Without packaging, materials handling would be a messy, inefficient and costly exercise and modern consumer marketing would be virtually impossible. The packaging sector represents about 2% of Gross National Product (GNP) in developed countries and about half of all packaging is used to package food.
The historical development of packaging has been well documented elsewhere and will not be described in depth. However, an appreciation of the origin of packaging materials and knowledge of the early efforts in package development can be both instructive and inspirational and for this reason they are discussed briefly in this book. Suffice to say, the highly sophisticated plastic packaging industries which characterize modern societies today are far removed from the simple packaging activities of earlier times.
Very few books can lay claim to be the first to expound or develop a particular area, and the present work is no exception. A number of books already exist with the words “food” and “packaging” in their titles 3,5-8,12,15,17,22,24-27 and this article complements the efforts of these earlier authors. The whole field of food science and technology has undergone tremendous development over the last 30 years and this has been reflected in a plethora of books, many if which address quite specific subject areas, In addition, there is the standard reference article on packaging 4 which is an essential resource for anyone working in the area of food packaging.
Food packaging lies at the very heart of the modern food industry and successful food packaging technologists must bring to their professional duties a wide-ranging background drawn from a multitude of disciplines. The interdisciplinary nature of food packaging is evident from the chapter headings of this book. Sufficient material has been included in the text for it to stand alone as a textbook for undergraduate and graduate students who are taking a two-semester course in food packaging. However, key references are included at the end of each chapter so that those who wish to pursue particular aspects in move depth in more depth will have some guidance to start them on their way.
Recycling of Plastic Packaging
In the U.S., recycling of plastic packaging began, on a limited scale, in the 1970s with recycling of PET soft drink bottles and HDPE milk bottles. Milk bottles were collected almost exclusively through drop-off programs, where people would bring clean empty bottles to some central location where they would be collected. Because only crude processing methods were available, labels on the milk bottles were a significant contaminant. Many programs asked residents to remove the labels, but in general met with extremely limited success. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, in one of the early programs, workers at the processing facility cut the labeled section of the bottle out with a utility knife and discarded it before sending the rest of the bottle through the grinder, in order to meet the purity requirements of the user, The recovery rate in such programs (amount of material collected for recycling compared to the amount available) was extremely low.
Recycling of PET soft drink bottles was considerably more successful. The existence of bottle deposit programs in nine states (ten if California’s refund value system is included) provided a pool of collected material of consistent quality. Therefore, the early recycling efforts focused primarily on the processing and end use parts of the cycle. PET recycling also had the advantage of PET having superior properties and higher value than HDPE. By the mid 1980s,the PET recycling rate hovered around 20% in the U.S., almost exclusively due to recycling of deposit containers. There was some additional recycling of PET in non-deposit states, much of it through the Beverage Industry Recycling Program (BIRP), which was designed primarily to combat the passage of deposit legislation in additional states. Collection rates in these programs, even though some paid consumers for the containers they delivered, was comparable, to those in the drop-off DHPE milk bottle programs. Deposit programs, on the other hand, generally had redemption and recycling rates approaching 90%, or sometimes even higher.
The definition of recycling rates requires some discussion. Until the late 1990s, the American Plastic Council calculated recycling rates as the amount of recovered material delivered to new markets divided by the amount of material available for collection, converted to a percentage . In the late 1990s, the APC changed the method of calculation to use the amount of material delivered to the processing center, rather than the amount coming out of the door for reuse, as the numerator, Since there are losses associated with recycling rates. APC argued that this action simply brought the methodology used in other industries. APC argued that this action simply brought the plastics industry’s method of reporting on recycling rates in accord with the methodology used in other industries, It certainly is true that this is the method of reporting recycling rates that is used in the paper industry. The glass industry, in addition to using quantities based on the amount of material delivered for processing, uses a formula that counts refillable containers as if they were recycled several times. In the metal industries, however, the calculation of recycling rates is based on the usable amount, rather than the total delivered amount. The change in methodologies sparked heated criticism from some environment groups. It is likely that the fact that the change in methodology occurred at the same time as the first decrease in the plastic recycling rates after a period of rapid growth, weather coincident or not, increased the criticism. Therefore it needs to be recognized that recycling rates reported by different entities may differ in both the data. Recycling rates coming from the U.S EPA Office of Solid Waste are usually based on industry reports about the amount of material recycled, so the differences in methodology affect that data, as well.
Regulation of food packaging is done on a much more generic basis than regulation of medical packaging. The primary concern with approval of plastic resins for food packaging is that the package does not adulterate the food in some way that could potentially be harmful to the consumer. Thus the main concern is migration of constituents from the plastic packaging material to the food or beverage with which it is in contact. In the 1958 Food Additives Amendment to the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act, the U.S Congress gave the FDA jurisdiction over both direct and indirect food additives.
While one might not expect the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to regulate medical devices, that act has, in fact, covered medical devices since 1938. That regulation became more stringent with the Medical Device Amendments of 1976, which brought to some medical devices the same premarket approval needed for drugs. The amount and type of regulation of medical devices depends on their classification. All medical devices intended for human use are classified by expert panel as ClassⅠ- General Controls, ClassⅡ- Special Controls, or Class Ⅲ – Premarket Approval. Devices in ClassⅠrequire truthful labeling, record keeping, and other fairly standard rules, including adherence to good manufacturing practices. Premarket notification is also required, meaning that the manufacturer must notify FDA of its intent to market the product, but need not wait for FDA approval. Class Ⅲ devices require the same general type of premarket approval as drugs, including approval of the packaging. The new device regulation has become more overtly a process control regulation, and specifies that the package is a component of the device.