Conventional Plastic Films vs Sustainable Films

As the green movement continues to be welcomed, sustainability is an important issue in the world. Plastic films are being studied to find more sustainable manufacturing methods. Plastic films are defined as packaging materials and are typically less than 10 mils thick (0.001 inch for mils) and average 0.7 to 1.5 mils and are used as bags or packaging materials can do. They are composed of various materials that can be simple or complicated depending on the requirements of a particular product or package (Osborn & Jenkins, 1992).

The laminated and coextruded plastic material can be a single film or a combination of plastics. There are two ways to combine plastics. Lamination and coextrusion. Laminating involves bonding two or more plastics together, or bonding plastics to paper or other material such as aluminum (as described in the Metal Section). Bonding is typically accomplished through the use of water based, solvent based or solid based adhesives. After the adhesive was applied to one film, the two films were passed between the rolls and they were pressed together. Lamination using lasers instead of adhesives has also been used for thermoplastic resins (Kirwan and Strawbridge 2003). Lamination makes it possible to perform reverse printing in which printing is not worn out because it is embedded between the layers, and the heat sealing property can be improved or improved

The laminating of the laminate and metallized film package involves gluing the aluminum foil to paper or plastic film to improve barrier properties. A thin gauge is easy to apply. Heat seals can be achieved by lamination with plastic, but the seals do not completely block moisture and air. Because laminated aluminum is relatively expensive, it is commonly used for packaging high value foods such as dried soups, herbs and spices. A cheaper substitute for laminate packaging is a metallized film. Metallized films are plastics containing a thin layer of aluminum (Fellows and Axtell 2002). These films have improved barrier properties against moisture, oil, air and odor, and the highly reflective surface of aluminum is attractive to consumers. It is more flexible than laminate film, metallized film is mainly used for snack packaging.