The following is a brief introduction to several environmentally friendly lunch boxes and their advantages and disadvantages:
1. Paper boxes Paper is the most familiar type of material.
"Replacing plastic with paper" naturally became the first solution that people thought of. The technology of replacing plastic with paper is to use pulp as raw material, form and dry in the mold to produce disposable tableware.
Advantages: The tableware made by this method is called "environmentally friendly products" because of its advantages such as non-toxic and harmless, easy to recycle, renewable and degradable. It is currently a better alternative technology with comprehensive evaluation.
Disadvantages: If we evaluate from the whole process of paper production and use, this technology also has shortcomings. First, the production of pulp requires a large amount of forest resources, while my country's forest resources are limited. A large amount of deforestation causes soil erosion, which is not in line with my country's national conditions; on the other hand, pulp will cause serious water pollution during production, and in some cases the degree of pollution even exceeds that of plastic. So from a macro perspective, the technology of replacing plastic with paper cannot completely eliminate the pollution to the environment, but only advances the pollution of the tableware to the pollution of the environment when making lunch boxes. In addition, the production cost of pulp is high, which makes the price of paper tableware produced with pulp relatively high, so replacing plastic with paper is not a perfect solution.
2. Plant fiber lunch box This technology is to crush plant fibers, such as straw, rice straw, sugarcane bagasse, etc. to obtain fiber powder, then mix a certain amount of glue or resin, and then inject it into the mold to form under high pressure and high temperature.
Advantages: The products produced by this technology are better in terms of degradability and have abundant sources of raw materials.
Disadvantages: The disposable tableware produced by this technology does not remove fiber pigments during production (because chemical bleaching methods must be adopted to remove pigments, which will inevitably cause water pollution), and the appearance color of the product is unsatisfactory.
3. Biodegradable lunch box Biodegradable lunch box is a relatively advanced environmentally friendly product. It uses starch as the main raw material, adds one-year plant fiber powder and special additives, and is processed by chemical and physical methods to make a biodegradable fast food box.
Advantages: Since starch is a biodegradable natural polymer, it is decomposed into glucose under the action of microorganisms, and finally decomposed into water and carbon dioxide. In addition, the materials mixed with it are also fully degradable materials, so it can be said that it has no impact on the environment. The main source of raw material starch can be annual plants such as corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and cassava.
Disadvantages: Biodegradable lunch boxes are not perfect. For example, most of the raw materials are grain crops, and there are problems such as mildew prevention that need to be solved.
