Recycling food plastic bag application issues

In the “Calls and Suggestions” of the Citizen’s Through Train column in the 2005 issue of Changzhou Daily, a letter from a citizen named Hu Shengqing was published. The full text is as follows: “Specification of Food Packaging Bags”, “Editing Comrades: Often See Some People Riding a bicycle on the street to promote red and green plastic bags, individual vegetable stalls, pastry stalls, fruit stalls, vegetable stalls, etc. have become the main purchase objects of these plastic bags.Whether these unclear plastic bags meet the requirements of food packaging In particular, the requirements for cooked foods have not been checked by any department, and consumers are invisible to the naked eye. Therefore, it is hoped that the food management department can pay attention to these situations."

After reading this article, the author felt deeply touched, and made an in-depth understanding of the use of food plastic bags in the market from the perspective of food hygiene and safety, and put forward some countermeasures to further strengthen the management of food plastic packaging bags. I refer to the plastic bags mainly refers to consumers used to call vest vest bags of large and small, various colors of plastic bags.

1 Development of Food Plastic Bags

The food packaging bag is made by adding certain plasticizers, stabilizers, and other additives through plastic extrusion, blow molding, molding, and the like to the food plastic particles that meet the national hygiene standards. Food packaging bags of normal and regular channels shall be produced according to the “Hygiene Management Methods for Food Plastic Products and Raw Materials” and “Food Sanitation Law” of the Chinese Ministry of Health. After strict inspection by the health supervision department, manufacturers who can obtain the health permits can produce. When a plastic bag for food is shipped from the factory, the outer package must have a Chinese logo, the name of the factory, the site of the factory, and the implementation standards. The word "used in food" should be clearly marked and the product inspection certificate should be attached after the product leaves the factory. The food production and operation units that use food packaging bags must obtain a copy of the production hygiene license and inspection certificate from the plastic bag manufacturing company for inspection. Currently qualified countries allow raw materials used to produce food bags: polyethylene, polypropylene, polyester, polyamide, polyvinylidene chloride, polycarbonate, polyvinyl alcohol, ethylene-vinyl alcohol copolymer, etc. Adapt to the needs of packaging various foods. In terms of food hygiene and safety, raw materials meet national standards and production processes are strictly controlled. Their products are safe to the human body and can be used with confidence.

2 Existing Problems <br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br><br>

Since its invention in the 20th century, food plastic bags have been accepted by consumers because of its convenience, and have penetrated into every aspect of life, becoming an indispensable part of the fast-paced, high-efficiency life of consumers: supermarket shopping, trade The market to buy food, the morning market to buy fritters, taro, and the purchase of cooked food, dry food, etc., have become accustomed to become natural, pick up plastic bags, installed and left, but few thought: bag safe?

With the reform and opening up and the operation of the market, the rapid development of economy, and the acceleration of the pace of life, the high convenience of plastic bags has become more prominent, making its demand more and more. The production process of plastic bags is relatively simple and the first phase of investment is very small, so there are quite a number of unlicensed home-style workshops or individuals have the ability to invest in the production of various plastic bags. In order to reduce the cost, the raw materials used by these small factories are often various kinds of waste plastics recovered from garbage stations, and even medical infusion needles, pesticide bottles, agricultural mulch, etc. Chemical additives are added to make vest bags, that is, recycled plastic bags. They sell them to small business hawkers via wholesale or street walks, even to some big shopping malls, big food stores, and finally reach consumers. It is understood that this type of recycled plastic bag occupies a large share in the market due to its low price and great market competitiveness. There are many delicatessens, restaurants, and shopping malls that have previously used regularly-qualified plastic food bags. They are also quietly using or mixing recycled bags.

3 Harm to the human body <br> Nowadays, the problem of using more and more widely used recycled plastic bags has surfaced and it has begun to attract everyone's attention. This kind of recycled plastic bag is used to package foods. The harm to the human body is hidden, long-term and chronic. It can cause some acute and chronic diseases and even cancer.

3.1
The source of raw materials for the production of recycled plastic bags is extremely complex. Inevitably, it contains polyvinyl chloride components that cannot be used for packaging food, or contains other unknown poisons and a large number of microorganisms and germs that are invisible to the naked eye. Food, the harm to human health is extremely great.

3.2
Waste plastic raw materials in the process of processing into recycled plastic bags, adding plasticizers and plastic stabilizers such as lead stearate, due to the simple process of recycled plastic bags, use this recycled plastic bags containing oil, alcoholic foods and temperatures over 6O Degree of food, the monomer in the bag, lead, etc. is easily dissolved into the food, which can easily cause people to accumulate toxic, causing great harm to the human liver, kidney and nervous system.

3.3
Recycled plastic bags in the production process to cover the raw material impurities and add coloring agents, so the common variety of colorful plastic bags. Its permeability, volatility, when exposed to oil, hot, easy to seep out. If it is an organic colorant, it also contains strong carcinogens such as benzopyr, and the contact with food is transferred into the food, causing harm to the human body.

3.4
Some recycled plastic bags add a lot of inorganic mineral fillers such as calcium carbonate and talcum powder in the production. The residue of the health index is greatly exceeded, and when the food is loaded, it is easy to stick to the food and it is easy to form gallstone disease after entering the human body.

3.5 Some recycled plastic bags have a pungent odor, releasing toxic gases HI3, easy to invade food, enter the human body to form a hazard.

4 Management measures
Reviewing the hygiene supervision over the market for a long time, indeed, the supervision of plastics, especially food plastic bags, is a weak point in the work. The supervisory and law enforcement departments must first correct their attitudes, adjust their own form awareness, and raise the level of supervision of food packaging bags to the height of supervision of the food itself. All functional departments should supervise these small pervasive recycled plastic bags just as they regulate the safety of imported foods.

4.1
All functional departments should distinguish their responsibilities, take food hygiene and safety as their objective, strictly implement the “Food Hygiene Law” and “Hygiene Management Methods for Food Plastic Products and Raw Materials”, and propose to increase the establishment of a food plastic bag production license application approval system. Bags must be marked on the finished product "food" or "forbidden use of food packaging" and other words.

4.2
Functional departments should continue to strengthen supervision. Although there are methods to identify genuine and fake food packaging bags, it is unrealistic for consumers to really grasp and identify plastic bags after use. Most consumers do not have the expertise and skills to identify them. Therefore, To prevent recyclable plastic bags from harming human health, it is mainly necessary to rely on the management department. It is necessary to severely crack down on the suppression of unlicensed and unlicensed manufacturers, strengthen penalties for illegal businesses, strengthen market supervision, strengthen the management of food production and operation units and individual vendors who need to use food plastic bags, and let plastics that do not meet food hygiene standards. Bags, unlabeled plastic bags, and recycled plastic bags for false labeling cannot enter the market and exit the market until they disappear.

4.3
The government must support and increase investment. It can use various media to do some public service advertisements, use the opportunity of 3.15, food promotion month, etc. to strengthen the publicity of food packaging hygiene knowledge, and strengthen publicity for the harm to human body from recycled plastic bags for food, and let consumption. Awareness of the “toxicity of recycled plastic bags” has led to increased consumer awareness of the need to use safe food plastic bags, with less use of recycled plastic bags for food packaging. Let the consumer's life like the one mentioned at the beginning of this article worry less, and let all consumers worry less.

4.4
Associating environmental protection with resource and energy conservation and reuse, relevant functional departments must also strengthen supervision over the recycling of plastics so that recycled plastics can be recycled to a reasonable place.