Migration of substances from food packaging materials to foods

The employment of novel food packaging materials has increased the number of occurring hazards due to the migration from packaging material to the packaged food. Although polymers have mainly monopolized the interest of migration testing and experimentation, recent studies have revealed that migration also occurs from "traditional" materials generally considered to be safe, such as paper, carton, wood, ceramic, and metal. The regulations and the directives of the EU tend to become stricter in this respect: The emphasis is on reaching a consensus in terms of food simulants and testing conditions for migration studies. Furthermore, the list of hazardous monomers, oligomers, and additives continues to augment in order to ensure that the consumer safety is in current agreement with the HACCP, which is continuously gaining ground

Recycling of polymeric materials used for food packaging: Current status and perspectives

Packaging materials are currently considered an important source of environmental waste because of their great volume. Although for materials like glass, aluminum, and paperboard recycling has been rather extensively practiced, it proved to be a much more arduous task for polymeric materials because of their great variety and the coexistence/mixing of various polymers either as blends or as copolymers. Therefore, constructive approach to recycling would consist of reviewing its current status worldwide to make a comprehensive presentation of the current trends and the state of art techniques for plastic disposal, sorting, and recycling. Although mechanical, feedstock, and chemical recycling of polymers are thoroughly analyzed within the frame of this review, other alternatives such as landfill, incineration, pyrolysis, reuse and recovery, and composting are also presented and commented