Abstract

In our everyday life we are exposed, as consumers, continuously to laminated structures. It is about packaging in general, flexible packaging in particular and of course food packaging. Lamination for flexible substrates is about layering 2 or more webs, stabilizing the compound by means of an adhesive, in order to comply with a specific, end-use oriented, design.

Lamination has a specific social mission. Make package lighter and more consumer friendly. By formulating multiple webs compounds it is in fact possible to generate structures combining and perfecting the characteristics of alternative technologies such as rigid packaging. Once that is accomplished we have achieved a packaging that is not just lighter: it requires less energy to be produced, generates less pollution at production, has a better product to package ratio, accounts for less volume into landfill, it is more economical to transport, protects the product better, extends the shelf life, and more.

Nothing different from Mother Nature. Think to the way nature figured out to preserve fruits. The skin of water melons and bananas is way heavier and features a greater volume than some of the flexible packaging we are used to this days.

Therefore being packaging and its latest evolution “flexible packaging” being a great invention and innovation, one may think that people perception about the social role of packaging should be at very high and positive levels. It is not the case. Bad press and a misperceived sense of protecting the environment play against this technology. How many times you have been exposed by media to how bad is plastic for nature? And how negative is the impact of packaging on environment? How many times you have heard about the poor dolphin killed by a bunch of plastic floating on the ocean? It is not about plastic. It is not about packaging. It is more about the use people does with plastics and packaging at the end of the use. It is all about it.

According to the EPA Americans generates around 250 million tons/year of municipal solid waste. Guess what category of waste plays the bigger role? Plastics? Packaging? Wrong answers: it is food. About 20% of the total.

Plastic is at the very bottom of the list, a mere 2%. Is this proportional to the media claims? Is this proportional to the real size of the problem?

No it is not, definitely it is not, but it makes for a better headline the dolphin tragedy that it makes to teach consumers and the industry that food waste is suitable to be reduced by means of a cleaver use of packaging; and to teach people how to dispose and recycle; and to teach and discuss about the most energy friendly and pollution friendly and waste volume friendly of the packaging technologies. There is no logic in media approach but it is what it is, and it is to us to try to disseminate knowledge and facts.