The way of life and production of human beings should be adjusted to be more friendly and harmless to the environment. That is to say, the measures to control environmental pollution should be put on the adjustment of lifestyle and production process, not just after the pollutants are produced. According to this principle, in the late 1980 s, human society began to pay attention to the various impacts on the environment in the whole process of product manufacturing, use, recycling and discarding, that is, the whole life process of the product from the cradle to the grave. Comprehensive analysis of the impact of each link on the environment. In order to obtain a long-term market share for a new type of product, in addition to the impact of the product production process itself on the environment, it is necessary to analyze and evaluate the various impacts of its raw material sources and product whereabouts on the environment, and conduct quantitative analysis, in order to draw the correct conclusion of which product is more viable.

In recent years, plastic packaging, especially foamed PS tableware, has become increasingly polluted to the environment. At present, the total annual production of plastic packaging waste in China's domestic waste has exceeded 2 million tons, and the volume of war waste is nearly 1/3. Due to the enhancement of people's environmental awareness and the improvement of the rational use of resources, the production of disposable goods has to consider its environmental pollution and resource waste. New environmentally friendly products have emerged, especially fast food tableware.

The State Environmental Protection Administration has made the control of "white pollution" a key task. It plans to control the growth of "white pollution" in major traffic arteries and big cities by 2000, completely ban the production, sale and use of foam tableware, prohibit the production and use of ultra-thin plastic bags, establish a mandatory recycling system for packaging materials under the responsibility of manufacturers, and basically eliminate "white pollution" by 2005 ".

Such as the impact of waste plastics on the environment, technical status and economic benefits of three aspects of a comprehensive analysis, we can draw such a conclusion: first of all, should choose the way of recycling; in the case of recycling value is too low, can choose incineration treatment; finally choose landfill treatment. For those cases where recycling systems are difficult to reach, recycling is too difficult or economically uneconomical, it will be an inevitable trend to promote the use of products that are easily absorbed by the environment, such as foamed tableware replaced by degradable plastics or paper tableware.

With the improvement of people's living standards, the development of the fast food industry and the enhancement of people's awareness of environmental protection, the continuous emergence of new tableware will be unstoppable, and the types and use of fast tableware will continue to increase. The competition between domestic and foreign fast food container manufacturers and fast food industry itself will be more intense, and the development direction will be more easy to recycle or be absorbed by the environment.

As a research, development and production unit of new tableware, under the banner of environmental protection, the raw material source, production process and scale of a new product, product quality (safety, hygiene, physical and chemical indicators, performance), price and how to deal with after use and many other factors should be fully considered to make the weight and volume of tableware as small as possible, toxic and harmful substances as few as possible, and the value of recycling and recycling as large as possible, the degradation rate is controllable, and the road of sustainable development is to save resources and protect the environment.

The production process, safety, hygiene and environmental protection performance are the most stable, and the price is also more dominant is the light/biodegradable polypropylene products, followed by the cardboard coating type, whose cost can be reduced by printing advertisements on lunch boxes. The pulp molding type has heavy environmental pollution in the early stage caused by the current production process, high cost of food hygiene standards, difficulty in reducing the cost of qualified products, and its recycling and degradation speed are not dominant, it is not suitable for large-scale promotion and application of main products. With the standard of health and environmental protection index performance, the process is becoming more and more stable. In addition, the price of raw materials is low, the external environment in the early stage of production does not cause significant pollution, and the biodegradation performance is good. Its prospect is still possible (but it is very difficult to strengthen the supervision and inspection of pesticide and aflatoxin residues, which completely meets the standard). Compound starch molding coating type, is currently on the railway car a small number of trials, has not yet formed a large number of production, performance needs to be further verified. There are also some foamed plastic products with photodegradation or biodegradation properties, such as "light/biodegradable polystyrene foamed lunch box" and "biodegradable compound starch-added polystyrene foamed lunch box". Due to the slow degradation rate of delamination, the uncertainty of biodegradation mechanism, many natural interference factors, and the existence of styrene oligomers, they are not considered in the national standards. With regard to cardboard coated with PE film lunch boxes (also known as "paper-plastic lunch boxes"), due to the improvement of current recycling and beating filtration technology, small pieces of PE film can be collected and processed centrally, which has no great impact on the environment and can also be included in the type of cardboard coating film. At present, the foaming type of rice and wheat husk has also appeared. Due to its poor strength and unclear food hygiene performance, it has not been considered in the national standard for the time being.