What is Cornstarch Packaging &#; Pros & Cons

Posted July 4,

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Last Updated on January 16, by Steve Harsh

Eco-friendly products in packaging are the new trend that is here to stay and become more critical. According to statistics, there is a vast number of people in the modern world who love eco-friendly materials. For instance:

• The search for sustainable products has increased by 130 percent between the year to Google.
• Alone in the US, this rate increased by 117 %.
• The 75 percent of overall product categories saw better sales results with sustainable products.

These facts show how eco-friendly packaging can improve the overall results of your product sales. This blog will inform you about the pros and cons, the future of the technology, and similar packaging materials.

What Is Cornstarch Packaging?

Cornstarch is an excellent material for multiple packaging needs and can replace plastic. It comes from corn; it comes from plant sugar and starch. Still, it offers perfect, cost-effective solutions from materials that do not cost much. It is among the eco-friendly solutions that are relatively easy to produce.

Its production comes from agricultural waste, so you can save money to produce it. Still, it offers you complete safety for food products. At the same time, it would easily break into the natural environment. This way, it is biodegradable and breaks down within a few months.

Pros of Cornstarch

Cornstarch is famous for a reason, and there is a complete list of pros it offers, like:

• It is a safe material for food packaging
• Cornstarch has excellent biodegradable and compostable properties
• You can try it to create fantastic print jobs
• Using it helps you get a better aroma barrier
• It is reliable when you need UV resistance for your packaging and products.
• At the same time, you can get waterproof solutions when you use this material.
• You can recycle it.
• Getting the material that helps you create it is easy; the fact makes it perfect with sustainable production resources.
• Also, it offers you low flammability.
• You can even use cornstarch as a fertilizer once it is no longer useable as a packaging product. Still, it does not carry many toxins that could damage the environment.
• Using it offers you resistance against food oils and other fats.

Its Benefits For Food Packaging

There are many benefits to food packaging needs using this material. It can help the stability of soups and sauces as an additive. At the same time, it offers texture and uniformity of these food products. Moreover, it provides a better shelf life, which you can use for storing carbohydrates.

The thing is, it offers you insolubility inside water. You can get 100 percent safety when you package food products in this material. At the same time, it resists oils and food fats, and you do not even have to use coatings or chemicals.

One of the most unique reasons to use this material is you can transform it into fertilizers for fields. At the same time, it would work for creating products. It works for paper packaging needs.

Cons of The Cornstarch

Just like the good things we found about cornstarch, we have some disadvantages you can face. For instance:

• It would not be possible to decompose this material in a natural condition.
• Putting this material in the recycling stream can cause contamination. And, due to less awareness, it does end up there.
• Also, it would cause issues for composted materials due to their acidic properties.
• This material comes from genetically modified corn.
• The wastage of this material can be a problem because it is a typical food globally.
• At the same time, many facilities support its composting.
• Moreover, the infrastructure required for the material&#;s processes is not very high in number.
• There are few facilities for this material, so it mostly ends up in landfills.
• At the same time, it would cause methane gas production, a by-product not welcomed due to environmental issues.

Trends With Cornstarch

There is a host of trends coming when we talk about cornstarch. We will cover some of them in this blog.

A Method To Increase Quantity

There are ways around when it comes to this material. So, using ethanol to increase cornstarch can help you out. Also, get rid of any carbon emissions in the environment.

Improvement In Quality

Link to Tongqi

Recommended article:
5-Com Cornstarch Packaging: The Ultimate Guide to Eco-Friendly Solutions

Methods that can help improve the quality of this material are being found. This way, the use of it works in the paper and textile industry. Also, it can work for corrugating purposes.

Improved Cornstarch

Now, some experiments can help the future of this material in the packaging world. The results gave nano biocomposites containing bacterial cellulose. One of these experiments that can improve food packaging helped create materials that can:

• Offer optical properties
• It offers you tensile properties
• You can get better barrier properties that can enhance food packaging results.

These benefits can help get more out of this trend, which has also helped many other packaging fields.

Plant Oils And Cornstarch

Using plant oils with cornstarch can help improve the strength of your boxes. They also showed that you can use them as active films and get more moisture barrier.

Cornstarch Packaging For Apparel And Fashion

Using this material for packaging that can support fashion and apparel products is becoming famous. Unfortunately, this industry is among the ones that emit a large amount of carbon. It produces around 8 to 10 percent of total carbon emissions.

Using nylon, acrylic, and polyester causes a rise in plastic waste that ends up in oceans around the world. This is where cornstarch helps improve the pollution conditions around the globe. You can use this material for both ecommerce and other packaging types.

These materials work for clothing and are common in different ecommerce stores. Even the use of resealable product bags for the industry is becoming common. Their quality will be pretty good as you can make them strong, and they can carry great printing work.

Some Other Similar Materials

Here is a list of eco-friendly solutions you can get from sustainable methods.

• Biodegradable packaging peanuts
• Recycled cardboard
• Glassine
• Green cell foam
• Potato starch
• Grape Skin
• Sheep wool
• Chicken feathers
• Palm
• Coconut
• Milk
• Sheep wool
• Cellulose
• Shrimp cells
• Kraft paper
• Sugar and carbon dioxide
• Mushroom material
• Eucalyptus
• Seaweed
• Biodegradable plastics
• Corrugated bubble wrap
• Air pillows
• Organic ecological textiles
• Edible films materials

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FAQs

Is cornstarch packaging good for food packaging?

It is a common type of food packaging that allows you to use compostable and biodegradable materials for your products. At the same time, it is a renewable material that promotes sustainability regarding packaging materials. Also, it is considered safe for food materials and is approved by the FDA.

Is cornstarch packaging waterproof?

Add waxes or polymers if you want to make your cornstarch packaging waterproof. Such coatings can help make your packaging more resistant to splashes and issues like exposure to moisture. At the same time, there are specific formulations of cornstarch that you can make for better water resistance through particular processing techniques.

How is corn starch packaging made?

• The process of construction packaging manufacturing is quite complex, starting with soaking corn kernels in water.
• Then, extract starch from them, purify, and refine it to move any impurities for better consistency.
• In the following process, you polymerize it, adding plasticizers for better flexibility and workability of the material.
• Then, you form them into shapes and sizes you want to work with.
• Next, cool down the packaging and check it for quality control issues before sending it.

PLA (Polylactic acid) comes from fermented plant starch (mostly from corn), and is often referred to as corn starch plastic. It is becoming popular very quickly, because corn-based plastic is a more environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional plastics, which are petroleum-based. Many countries are starting to ban plastic grocery bags altogether, like Ireland, China, Uganda, and South Africa, because it is exactly these plastic bags that are responsible for the skyrocketing levels of so-called &#;white pollution&#; worldwide. Corn starch plastic is deemed to be a biodegradable replacement, which is quite viable in our world today. (To read about oxo-biodegradable plastics,

Advantages
1.Comes from corn, which is a renewable resource
2.Does not contain toxins
3.Producing this kind of plastic creates much less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional plastic production (a reduction of 68 percent)
4.Corn starch plastic can be composted in facilities for industrial composting
5.65 percent less energy is needed to produce corn-based plastic than to produce conventional plastic
6.PLA plastic is competitive with conventional plastic in terms of cost, since petroleum prices are only going up
7.PLA is more safe, since there is no danger of explosions in its production (as is the case with using petroleum)

Disadvantages
1.Although PLA is compostable, there are very few facilities where this can actually be done (in the USA only about 113 sites for this exist)
2.Most likely consumers will not compost corn starch plastics properly, and just put them in regular recycling. This could contaminate the recycling stream
3.Composting PLA in large quantities could undermine conventional composting, since the polymer contained in corn-based plastic makes regular compost more acidic.
4.Since there is a lack of adequate infrastructure to compost PLA, most of it will probably still go into landfills.
5.MRFs &#; Material Recovery Facilities &#; are responsible for paying for sorting and disposing of PLA
6.Because PLA is derived from corn, there are moral issues with it being used for packaging, since there are people in the world dying of hunger
7.PLA is mostly produced from genetically modified corn

(To read get some eco-friendly home tips,
For more information on bioplastics, go to:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioplastic
http://www.worldcentric.org/biocompostables/bioplastics

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PLA (Polylactic acid) comes from fermented plant starch (mostly from corn), and is often referred to as corn starch plastic. It is becoming popular very quickly, because corn-based plastic is a more environmentally-friendly alternative to traditional plastics, which are petroleum-based. Many countries are starting to ban plastic grocery bags altogether, like Ireland, China, Uganda, and South Africa, because it is exactly these plastic bags that are responsible for the skyrocketing levels of so-called &#;white pollution&#; worldwide. Corn starch plastic is deemed to be a biodegradable replacement, which is quite viable in our world today. (To read about oxo-biodegradable plastics, click here ). Let&#;s examine the advantages and disadvantages of implementing corn-based plastics in every-day use.1.Comes from corn, which is a renewable resource2.Does not contain toxins3.Producing this kind of plastic creates much less greenhouse gas emissions than conventional plastic production (a reduction of 68 percent)4.Corn starch plastic can be composted in facilities for industrial composting5.65 percent less energy is needed to produce corn-based plastic than to produce conventional plastic6.PLA plastic is competitive with conventional plastic in terms of cost, since petroleum prices are only going up7.PLA is more safe, since there is no danger of explosions in its production (as is the case with using petroleum)1.Although PLA is compostable, there are very few facilities where this can actually be done (in the USA only about 113 sites for this exist)2.Most likely consumers will not compost corn starch plastics properly, and just put them in regular recycling. This could contaminate the recycling stream3.Composting PLA in large quantities could undermine conventional composting, since the polymer contained in corn-based plastic makes regular compost more acidic.4.Since there is a lack of adequate infrastructure to compost PLA, most of it will probably still go into landfills.5.MRFs &#; Material Recovery Facilities &#; are responsible for paying for sorting and disposing of PLA6.Because PLA is derived from corn, there are moral issues with it being used for packaging, since there are people in the world dying of hunger7.PLA is mostly produced from genetically modified corn(To read get some eco-friendly home tips, click here ). So, what we can conclude is that corn starch plastic may sound promising as an alternative to regular plastic, but it is by far not an optimal solution to the overall problem of pollution. A much better alternative is to simply take reusable bags with you to the grocery store and switch to reusable containers for storing food at home. The underlying problem is not so much the plastic itself, but our bad habits of using it and disposing of it almost unconsciously. Eliminate one-time, &#;immediate-gratification&#; plastic use, and you are on track to a better environment.For more information on bioplastics, go to:

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