The European green deal is at the origin of the rapid evolution of practices in food packaging and the need to manage the associated chemical risks. The presentation reviews the research actions resulting from the generalization of recycling, the substitution of plastics by cellulosic fibers, the development of repeated use and reuse. Recent results from three collaborative projects with the French national reference laboratory are presented. Mechanically recycled plastic material must be used for food contact after a decontamination step complicated by the presence of low volatile molecules. Cellulosic materials are reused without decontamination and are highly contaminated by mineral oils. A new assessment of the transfer risk by substance class is presented when recycled materials are partially decontaminated and used behind a functional barrier. This solution explored experimentally and computationally would allow recycled polyolefins potentially contaminated with high molecular weight substances. An application of cellulose microfibrils as a functional barrier is shown. The impossibility to identify experimentally if a deposit is decontaminated, of food, cosmetic or other origin is a real challenge. Low-resolution GC-MS is the universal technique for evaluating extracts and migrates. We developed a numerical procedure to robustly extract the fingerprint of arbitrary contamination patterns (with/without peak forests). Ion signals are wavelet-transformed, coded, and compressed as monotone segments with letters. The obtained sequences can quickly be realigned and compared with existing genomic tools. The measure of informational entropy enables the detection of contamination. Conditional entropy traces its origin between samples. The method's capabilities are demonstrated on various streams, materials, and foods in contact. The principle of a public repository of the chemical information and observatory of recycled materials is sketched.

New strategies to evaluate and manage recycled materials for food contact: A European point of view

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

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