ABSTRACT
With the exception of paper-based products, food packaging materials have traditionally been based on nonrenewable materials. This was not always so, and up until the beginning of the twentieth century, packaging materials, together with other industrial products such as inks, dyes, paints, medicines, chemicals, clothing and plastics, were made from biologically derived resources. During the twentieth century, petrochemical-based chemicals replaced biologically derived resources for most of these industrial products. Now, at the beginning of the twenty-rst century, increasing attention is being given to sustainability (discussed further in Chapter 23) and the replacement of nonrenewable resources (particularly those derived from petroleum) with those from renewable sources, essentially plant-derived products and by-products from their fermentation.
