Second visit to the supermarket and this time your intention is to buy fresh fruit. Can you tell how it is packaged? Have you ever seen the basket nets? For you, is the type of food packaging relevant? And, if we told you that there are compostable containers with antifungal and antimicrobial properties that extend the life of the packaged product?
They do exist. At ECOPLAS we are working on the VEGEPACK project where we are developing compostable meshes with antimicrobial and antifungal properties. How have you made it possible? Functional additives obtained from raw materials such as: pepper, custard apple and / or avocado have been introduced into the biopolymer matrix.
For example, we can find fruit packed in basket nets: It is a very light type of net ideal for covering plastic baskets. We can find it in different colors and it guarantees a correct display of the product. It has a security seal that guarantees that the packaged products have not been tampered with after this process, and a labeling that provides traceability of the product from the origin, garanting additional food safety to the customer.
The same does not happen when we find bulk fruit in the supermarket. The lack of information about its origin, the worst visual conditions in which the products find themselves and the obligation to use single-use plastic bags, are signs that should lead us to distrust when making bulk purchases.
Emphasize that Ecoplas offers both types of food packaging solutions, both in conventional, biodegradable and compostable materials. All of them, viable in all types of machinery: both manual and automatic.
Finally, once the basket mesh has been used, it is crucial to know its recycling process. Always remember that if the basket nets are made of compostable materials they have to go to the brown container. On the contrary, if the basket nets are made of a conventional plastic material, it should go to the yellow container.
Despite current social opinion, we must not demonize the use of plastic. Contrary to what many people currently think, the use of plastic generates more environmental benefits than other materials: it is lighter, allows to optimize resources more easily and therefore, it is economically more viable and without forgetting that it generates greater logistical savings. This is a question, however, that we will soon address and we will tell you what are the sustainable alternatives to traditional food packaging and what are the advantages and disadvantages of them.
If you would like to know more about our R&D projects, click here.