FAIR-CT98-4318 Programme on the recyclability of food packaging materials with respect to food safety considerations-polyethylene terephthalate and cellulosic fibres

Contacts
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FAIR Area 1.2 - Green Chemicals and Polymers Chain : Packaging : Paper/Pulp

	Type of Project	Shared Cost
	Contract No	FAIR-CT98-4318
	Total Cost
	EC Contribution
	Start Date
	Duration	36 Months

Programme on the recyclability of food packaging materials with respect to food safety considerations-polyethylene terephthalate and cellulosic fibres

Objectives

Food packaging regulations in Europe require that the packaging materials must not cause mass transfer (migration) of harmful substances to the food. Considerable scientific progress has been made in understanding and modelling the transfer of adventitious hazardous substances from recycled plastics into foodstuffs. Most of this knowledge has been elaborated within the recently finished EU project AIR-CT93-1014. One of the main conclusions of this project was that PET is a low diffusivity plastic and is the most promising polymer for reuse as a food packaging material. Nevertheless, the practical translation of this progress into innovative industrial solutions is still awaited. One of the reasons has typical 'European' character and can be substantiated by the fact that the European legal requirements in this respect are not yet clearly and uniformly defined. As a consequence, economic and generally recognized test methods are not available so far. With respect to PET, there is clearly an obvious reason for the industrial hesitation in launching advanced food packaging applications. In the whole chain of knowledge on diffusion and migration into and out of PET - which allows for instance to correlate a known initial concentration in the plastic with the resulting time-dependent concentration in a foodstuff - there remains one missing link: This is the still open but highly important question of the nature and concentration of actual contaminants found in re-collected PET. Filling up this gap with analytical data relevant for the whole of Europe, and then linking this statistical picture with the available knowledge on PET diffusion behaviour, would enable to draw scientifically sound and convincing conclusions about the safety of reusing PET. With respect to recovered paper and board as food packaging materials, the situation is practically the reverse of that described for plastics above. Considerable work has focussed on the compositional analysis of virgin and recycled fibres to identify contaminants that could potentially be harmful to the consumer. However, little systematic work has been focused on the interactions of such substances between paper/board fibres and foodstuffs, and taking also polymeric coatings and plastic layers on paper and board into account. Again, as with the PET situation, there is a missing link in the chain of knowledge about the migration from cellulosic fibres which needs to be made to achieve analogous goals as mentioned above for recycled PET and to enter new pathways in the enormous food packaging market of paper and board. This topic gains automatically even more importance since it is the clear intention of the European Commission services, now nearing completion of food contact plastics regulations, to bring also paper and board within the scope of specific European regulations on food contact materials.

Technical Approach

The objectives of the project are to facilitate industrial innovation and to harmonise legislative enforcement of new environmental packaging requirements stemming from the Directive 94/62/EEC on packaging and packaging waste, by:

• drawing up a statistical overview of the nature and extent of contaminants in PET recovered from the food packaging market, in order to establish an evaluation platform for the quality and safety-in-use of recycled PET plastics for food packaging
• generating a scientific understanding of the physico-chemical behaviour of chemical contaminants on paper and board fibres as a basis for safety evaluation and definition of criteria for the appropriate reuse of recycled fibres for food packaging

The aim of the project is to overcome the current hesitation and inhibitions to innovation felt by many SME companies who want to produce new and environmentally-friendly food packaging but who cannot operate in an uncertain legislative framework. Simultaneously practical recommendations and guidance to the Commission for appropriate legislation on recycled materials will be offered.

Contacts

Coordinator

• Franz CHLODWIG / University of Vienna Institut fuer Botanik und Lebensmittelkunde / AUSTRIA

EC Scientific Officer

• Xabier GOENAGA BELDARRAIN / European Commission DG Research Quality of Life Programme - Unit B1.2 / BELGIUM