Biodegradable Food Packaging Materials

The nonbiodegradability of synthetic plastics has emerged as one of the main challenges causing concerns among scientific researchers in recent years. Their excess usage as the food packaging material is especially discouraging as these materials have noxious impacts on the environment and human beings. Biodegradable polymers (natural materials capable of undergoing complete biodegradation) have now been considered an efficient alternative to these plastics as the biodegradable polymers efficiently mimic/improve the properties of synthetic polymers required for food packaging applications. Furthermore, discarding these materials in the environment is not a problem as the normal degradation pathways will be more than enough to assimilate these degradable polymers. This chapter aims to organize the literature associated with these specifics into different categories depending on the origin of the biopolymers. The case studies were divided into natural polymers, biopolymers extracted from renewable resources, and synthetic polymers containing monomers extracted from fossil reservoirs. Moreover, the fundamentals associated with the food packaging applications, including preparative methodologies for biodegradable film, properties of the synthesized films, quality check experiments, etc., are discussed in detail for presenting an overview of the said topic. This chapter will act as a guideline for the new researchers having an intention of exploring this field and will present a summary of the recent progress in this field for the currently associated scientific community.