Polylactic acid as a promising sustainable plastic packaging for edible oils

Abstract

The influence of renewable packaging materials on the oxidative stability of sunflower oil was investigated to evaluate whether they could be used as alternatives to conventional plastics. Two renewable bottle materials, polylactic acid (PLA) and bio-polyethylene (Green-PE) were compared to conventional plastics consisting of virgin and recycled polyethylene terephthalate (PET, r-PET) and regular polyethylene (PE), in a storage study over a period of 56 days. The results showed that the progress of lipid oxidation in PLA was similar to PET and r-PET until day 28, while it was significantly increased in PE and Green-PE. Benzene was detected as the only migration compound in the oil stored in PET and r-PET, with concentrations of 0.153 ± 0.027 µg/g and 0.187 ± 0.024 µg/g after 56 days of storage. The study concluded that PLA could be used as an alternative packaging material for edible oils to replace PET.