OREANDA-NEWS. BASF and "Feinpappenwerk Gebr. Schuster GmbH & Co. KG" are working jointly on a solution for a combined migration and grease barrier on recycled cardboard. The biopolymer ecovio® PS 1606 is applied to recycled cardboard in an extrusion coating process. This enables the proportion of recycled paper fibers in fast food packaging to be increased while simultaneously making it industrially compostable.

This is possible through the use of ecovio® PS 1606, a high-quality and versatile biopolymer from BASF. The special advantage: ecovio® is bio-based and biodegradable according to American Standard ASTM 6400 and European Standard EN 13432. The polymer coating applied to the cardboard is many times thinner than a human hair, but nevertheless provides the packaging with outstanding protection against potential migration of undesired substances while simultaneously offering high greaseproofness and liquid tightness. Cardboard packaging produced on this basis is more than 90 percent biobased, recyclable and industrially compostable.

Traditional barrier coatings are increasingly losing acceptance among customers because they hinder recycling or composting of used fast food packaging. The use of recycled cardboard for fast food packaging, however, is limited by the fact that substances can migrate from the packaging into the food. Many printing inks contain mineral oils, plasticizers or even residues of UV printing ink components.

Since the printing ink residues are not removed completely when recycling the paper fibers, residues remain. When these substrates are used for food packaging, residues can migrate from the cardboard into the food especially when the foods are packaged hot or if they are greasy or liquid. This is why fast food packaging has so far been produced mainly from fresh fiber materials.

A study by the Cantonal Laboratory of Zurich from the year 2011 has shown that significant amounts of undesired substances can migrate into food from fast food packaging with migration potential. Classical coatings of polyethylene or polypropylene do not offer adequate protection. Here, ecovio® PS 1606 provides outstanding protection as a coating for the fast food packaging produced from recycled fibers. Measurements at an independent food laboratory have shown that there is no leaching of contaminants from the recycled fiber-based packaging into hot, greasy or liquid foods.