The simplest and cheapest way to package homemade cookies is put them right in food-grade cellophane bags and tie up or in zip-lock bags. If you don't have to ship them over distance or decorate them for gifting, plastic bags are arguably the best way to pack them. After all, those cellophane bags or zip-lock bags of assorted sizes are easy to avail online, with various printed styles. Plastic bags are good to keep the cookies from channeling flavor, too.
If you want to share your cookies or baked foods with friends far away, then you need sturdy cardboard boxes or cardboard gift boxes. And put your packaged plastic bags of cookies in the cardboard boxes. You may order cardboard boxes or custom gift boxes online or DIY them for small quantity.
Now most of us reading this have grown up with the old classic lunch box that was metallic, and probably has their favorite television show characters on them. Including the thermos that our parents would put milk or some kind of juice in the box. The lunches were delicious, sometimes they were healthy, sometimes not so much. However, as kids we did not care about that of course. We just wanted to eat. However, as things always do times have changed, and a more portable and covenant type of lunch box has come in to the mainstream market. This is a concept and design from the famous Japanese bento box, and if you have kids, once you see one of these lunch boxes you will never want to use anything else ever again.
Several advantages of bento lunch boxes over the old metallic ones are the safety factor. With metal your dealing with rust and possible cuts when the metal gets bent, and it always does sooner or later. We all know how our kids treat their lunch boxes. Most bento food containers are made out of a safe type of plastic. So it will be durable and seal against moisture. They also each come with separate containers that fit in to their own slots inside the box itself. This great little food container also comes with its own set of silverware. This idea of separating the foods into small containers helps maintain food portion control. All of which is very important for children leading a healthy lifestyle and not over eating. A lot of the bento containers also come with a little carrying case to put the entire lunch box inside.
The advantages of bento lunch boxes are numerous to just throwing a sandwich in a brown bag. Plus, these can be used by not just children but adults as well. They are perfect for a lunch in the park or when traveling, be it on a train or airplane. Other advantages of bento lunch boxes is that they are dishwasher safe. Now show me a metallic meal box that you could put in your dishwasher. Another great thing is a lot of these come with great laptop lunch ideas and recipes that fit perfectly in the bento lunch box. So if you are looking for a better way to pack your child's lunch for them, or if it is for you just to have an easy lunch while traveling, then the bento lunch box is the way to go.
But for the benefit our planet, it's strongly recommended to use eco-friendly bento lunch boxes that are biodegradable when disposed of and exposed to natural environments.
We are very used to two materials when it comes to packaging of food: Glass and Plastic. Both are extraordinary materials. Glass is already known to mankind since 7000 BC, plastic since 1940.
The fact that a lot of food is packed in plastic nowadays means that packaging in plastic seems to have some advantages over glass.
The most important advantages are that plastic is cheap and light. That plastic doesn't break and is rather flexible is another important factor. That many plastics are transparent is probably also one of the main reasons that it was considered as an alternative to glass.
Walk into a supermarket and see a whole range of plastic food packagings. At the soft drink section you see a lot of plastic bottles and many pastes, sauces and all kind of chips and other dried foods are packed in plastic. Besides you see many containers to keep food in, like boxes for in the freezer and boxes to store left overs.
Glass is also used much as a packaging material for food. Bottles for drinks, for conserved vegetables and fruits, tomato ketchup and other sauces, etc.
One thing which is noticeable is that glass seems to be the preferred material for long-lasting products and products which are easily to decay.
That glass is used for long storage of foods is logic. Glass is absolutely impermeable to gases and hence blocks the content from the oxygen in the air. Oxygen has the property that it oxidizes food and that means aging of the food. Some bacteria and fungus also need oxygen and the use of glass makes it impossible for them to grow. Glass is easy to sterilize.
Glass is also totally tasteless and it doesn't affect the taste or smell of any food packed in it. Plastic food containers do have a light or heavy smell.
What you can not see or feel are the additives which leach out of the plastic into your food. These additives range from anti-oxidants, anti-static agents, plastifiers, flame retardants, filling materials, colorants and light stabilizers, etc. Sometimes the plastic what you see is about fifty percent of the base plastic material and fifty percent of these additives.
The plastic packaging industry is of course aware of the additives and by government rules they have to diminish this leaching out of additives into the food. So they choose for additives with less mobility, special surface treatments to avoid leaching, additives which are tasteless or non-toxic where possible.
Whether non-toxic or not, these additives are leached into the food and you don't see it, so most of the time you don't know what is entering your body. The bad part is that in our modern society the government makes rules containing maximum allowable concentrations. As long as the leaching out of additives is below these values than they are accepted and may be used. The scary part of this is that by using these plastic containers, very low quantities of these additives are part of your food.
Safe according to the laws means not that there might not be any health effects. Yes-or-no discussions about some additives are going on for long times and sometimes it seems to be that some long-term effects were not known at the moments that the allowable concentrations were chosen.
Sure, some plastics, like HDPE and PET, have less additives than others but common additives like phthalates and bisphenol A, have been analyzed in the human population all over the world.
Glass doesn't contain these additives and is therefor much healthier for food packaging than plastic.
That we use so much plastic in our society is because it is convenient.
Glass breaks and this breakage causes loss of products and it causes wounds from cutting. Transportation of plastic packed food is cheaper since a glass packaging is heavier and the more heavy the product the higher the fuel costs. Production of plastic and the forming of products out of it is relatively cheap and easy.
Glass is recyclable and of the plastics only HDPE and PET are recyclable. New plastics which are biodegradable are developed and recycling programs try to do their best but plastic waste is piling up.
For 2010 it is estimated that we used 250 million tons of plastic and a big part of this ends up at the waste dump and in the oceans. The plastic ending up in the oceans is not just floating around. Big pieces are torn to smaller pieces and by sun and abrasion are turned in to microparticles. These microparticles have the property to attract toxic components. Unfortunately these microparticles are also consumed by the smallest living creatures in the sea and end up at the end of the food chain.
Glass production is not the cleanest production. It uses high temperatures to form glass and that consumes a lot of fuel.
Glass packaging materials have some disadvantages over plastic packaging materials. But when all the health and environmental issues are weighed together with the economical facts, then it becomes clear that glass is the only right material for food packaging and storage.
In the rapidly digitized world, the technology of food packaging is also constantly improving. At present, researchers and scientists are ex...
