Dipak Kumar Sarker

Packaging Technology and Engineering


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1.1c shows a very old cork‐topped bottle and a Victorian–Edwardian steel box for pills, which are practically never seen in the modern era, except for marketing promotions. Figure 1.1 shows a range of mid‐twentieth century, Edwardian, Victorian, and earlier packaging materials used for medicines. The containers cover green chromium glass, iron oxide amber glass, flint glass, and other common forms seen more routinely today, such as paperboard cartons and aluminium closures. The ‘earthenware’ pottery vessel used in the past for medicine, milk, beer, and oil is rarely used in contemporary society but does find a place in speciality products as a marketing tool used to infer tradition and antiquity. Looking carefully at the range of packaging and comparing it with that seen customarily in pharmacies, artisanal, ‘24 hour’, and mini‐mart shops and supermarkets used mostly today there is a stark contrast and difference in Figure 1.1 by virtue of the absence of plastic packaging in the period before 1950 [1].

      1.1.2 The Origins of Commercial Packaging

      1.1.3 Closures, Films, and Plastics

      1.1.4 Major Types of Packaging

      Plastic packaging had begun to be used widely across the globe after the 1950s and this has led to the present ‘mountains’ of undegraded waste that are still added to. Polyvinylidene chloride, or Saran®, was first used as a moisture barrier in 1946. In 1960 the two‐piece drawn and wall‐ironed (DWI) can was developed and in 1967 the ring‐pull opening was invented. Towards the end of the 1970s the plastic packaging sector had begun to grow, with the blow‐moulded PET bottle invented by DuPont. It was not until after the Second World War that general use of plastics in packaging applications started at a significant level. PE was mass produced during this period in Europe and became an easily obtained material from the late 1940s. At the beginning of this period it was a substitute for the wax paper used in bread packaging and still observed until the 1980s. The growth in plastic packaging use has accelerated at an astonishing pace since the 1970s. The technology available today and the requirements for a non‐perishable nature mean that many previously used materials (e.g. waxed paper) have been replaced by more suitable and economically viable materials such as glass, metal, plastic, paper, and cardboard. Before the 1950s packaging was essentially only used to protect the product during transport and storage. However, with the plethora of newer materials it has also begun to be used to advertise the product with the form, colour, printing, including fonts, and logos being a major part of the marketing process. This is simply because form‐differentiated packaging creates a distinction between the same types of products placed side by side on outlet shelves. The modern practice of favouring plastic as the packaging material of choice is, however, not without significant environmental concerns, with some amount greater than 15 million tonnes being present in the seas in 2017 and possibly as much as 30 million tonnes in 2019 according to recent estimates. The USA and Western European countries in 2000 consumed about 24% each of the world's plastics. Plastics such as PP are thought (based on chemical modelling and accelerated ageing study tests) to be able to persist in landfill for approximately 500 years. Single‐use plastics, which are discarded after one use (incinerated or sent for landfill), accounted for approximately 50% of all plastic packaging in 2019.