Safe use of recycled materials in food packaging, BANUS. FP7

BANUS project aims to develop new multilayer structures for food packaging applications, in order to evaluate their properties as functional barriers, using conventional polymers to achieve new functionalities and open new potential markets for the traditional recycling companies in Europe. Taking into account that the main objective of the project is to guarantee the suitability of the developed functional barrier layers, it is necessary to check that, independently of the quality of the used recycled material, the functional barrier is able to avoid any migration of contaminants to food. A great advantage of BANUS approach is to be able to guarantee food safety when using recycled materials (plastic and paper) even coming from non-authorized recycling processes in food packaging structures. The project will consider the substitution of a percentage of virgin material by recycled material (paper or plastic) in the selected structures in order to develop more environmental friendly food packaging structures. As the main requirement of food packages is always to guarantee food safety for consumers, this substitution will be achieved after evaluating the functional barriers positioned between recycled layers and foodstuffs.