Environmental requirements for sterile paper products

With the improvement of the people’s living standards, the people’s demand for their own health and quality of life has grown, and the market for dairy products, mainly “fresh” milk, has grown. The related sterile paper products technology and the development of domestic beverages and dairy products further accelerate the pace of development. As international aseptic packaging giants such as Tetra Pak, International Paper, and Isp continue to expand their markets in China, the degree of automation in filling machines has become higher and higher, and assorted sterile paper products of various volumes have become more and more popular. getting bigger. International Paper's Q filling series equipment can fill 12,000 boxes/hour, while Tetra Pak's high-speed filling machines can reach 160 bags/minute. However, in contrast to this, for some paper-plastic aluminum composite packaging that contains a variety of recyclable materials, there are few manufacturers that recycle and reuse in China. Due to the technological nature of this material, the “return to the original state” has a poor recovery effect and high cost, and it is difficult to price a single carton, resulting in high recycling costs. The current recycling channels are also relatively small. On the one hand, consumers do not know where to pay it. On the other hand, the re-use of the company's production is not enough to eat, and a large amount of material is wasted. The author saw that a Shanghai-based company had to send news and get a hotline on the Shanghai Xinmin Evening News, calling for people with environmental awareness and responsibility to respond positively. In fact, some international companies have a set of already-developed resource recycling and green consumption industries in their own countries or in the world. They have already formed a stronger and stronger circular economy. We may wish to learn from them.

For example, the country where Tetra Pak is located is Sweden. In 1994, Sweden established paper and paperboard recycling companies, plastic recycling companies, corrugated cardboard recycling companies, and metal recycling companies. Together with the earlier established glass recycling company, these five companies took on the responsibility of recycling and recycling of packaging materials in Sweden. Moreover, Sweden has very clearly formulated laws and regulations on recycling. The Swedish law stipulates that all companies that produce, import packaging and packaging products, and sell packaging products have the obligation to recycle the packaging. At the same time as the establishment of the above-mentioned five major companies, Sweden began to implement a “producer responsibility system”. Through this system, waste packaging materials that were originally burned and buried in large quantities were reused. According to the evaluation report of the Swedish National Environmental Protection Agency, the average recycling rate of all types of packaging materials in 2002 reached 65%, exceeding 660,000 tons. That is, more than half of the packaging products are made from recycled materials.

In Germany, the proportion of waste generated from all production industries is reused on average over 50%; the United States also has detailed relevant regulations.

China is confronted with the contradictions that the rapid growth of economic growth and the relative insufficiency of resources and the difficulty of ecological destruction are making it difficult to reconcile and have begun to intensify. To solve this contradiction, on the one hand, we must strengthen the promotion of the combination of international environmental protection concepts and Chinese traditional diligence and conservation awareness, strengthen the intensity of policy measures, and carry out detailed cycles; on the one hand, formulate laws as soon as possible and carry out systematic cycles.

For the packaging of sterile paper products, the most effective way to carry out the recycling of the system is to start from the source and start from the inside of the production company. The state should establish a "recyclable waste recycling responsibility system" with a series of economic, policy, and public opinion-oriented measures. The production unit is responsible for recycling or responsible for contact, transfer to the NGO organizations engaged in recycling and recycling, or production of industry associations, encouraging and Supervise domestic and foreign enterprises, especially international companies, to implement in China similar to the circular economy development model that is integrated with internationalization, and give them corresponding preferential treatment. At the same time, it can also reduce and limit the blind expansion of enterprises that are not fully capable. Rapidly wasting resource waste; International large companies can also improve their access to the industry's industry barriers through this competitive advantage to avoid irregularities like the so-called “eating milk” and respond to SMEs reducing quality and reducing prices. Bad price competition.

Sterile paper product packaging should focus on development and environmental protection. It is a competition requirement for China to enhance its own comprehensive national strength and international standards. It is a win-win opportunity for international companies to expand in China and develop new industries in the country. It is a promoter. Harmonious development with nature, the long-term plan for the benefit of the country and the people. Sterile paper products packaging should focus on the development and environmental protection counterparts, the key lies in the peer, the earlier to achieve peers, the more conducive to stable development, the sooner you will see the circular economy brings the overall beauty of environmental protection.

Author/Zhang Zhigang

Source: China Packaging 2005/4