When it comes to poly bags for food storage, there are some specific considerations you need to take into account. Below, we’ll outline some key features to look for before purchasing. 

Poly Bags for Food Storage: What to Look For

If you’re in the food industry, you know that food safety and freshness are top priorities in gaining and retaining loyal customers. Therefore, it’s important to find a packaging and storage solution that guarantees those things. Here are four features to look for in poly bags for food storage. 

1. Made with Food Grade Plastic

As its name suggests, food grade plastic is any plastic material deemed safe for use with foods. In order to be considered a food grade plastic, a material must meet various safety standards established by the Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory organizations. These standards ensure that the material meets the following three criteria:

• Protective – prevents moisture or contamination
• Durable – protects food items during manufacturing, packaging, storage, and transportation process
• Chemically safe – has no potential for “leeching”, which is when chemicals seep into the food

These standards also look for less life-threatening, but still important aspects like whether or not a plastic material affects the taste, odor, or color of the food. 

2. Food Storage Poly Bags That Are Thin, but Durable

With food storage, you generally need a bag that’s flexible, lightweight, moisture-resistant, and transparent so customers can see what’s inside. Luckily, various poly bags offer these benefits. 

However, depending on the type of food, size of food, shape of food, and/or quantity of food you’re hoping to store, you may need to invest in something a little more heavy-duty. This is where the difference between HDPE and LDPE poly bags come in. 

• High-density polyethylene (HDPE) poly bags are denser, causing them to be more durable and resistant to tears — but they can be less flexible and transparent than other options. Therefore, they’re most ideal for heavy, sharp, or bulk food items. 

• Low density polyethylene (LDPE) poly bags are less dense, causing them to be flexible, transparent, and easy to open. They’re the best option for lightweight, low-quantity food items. 

3. Able to Withstand Extreme Temperatures

Maybe you need to freeze your food, or maybe you’re planning to sell your food at an outdoor market in the summer. Either way, you need to make sure that the type of poly bag you choose can withstand the extreme temperatures you may store it in. 

These temperature-proofed poly bags usually have additives within them to help prevent the plastic from becoming brittle, breaking down, or melting — all in an effort to keep your food from damage and spoiling.

4. Sustainable Poly Bags

As your business has grown, you may have noticed the number of plastic bags you go through on a daily basis. As each food item is sold, another single-use plastic bag leaves the store, possibly leading you to think about your store’s impact on the environment. 

But food needs proper storage, and many of the sustainable packaging and storage options available aren’t within your budget — so, what are you to do?

Fortunately, there are some sustainable poly bag solutions available. At A-Pac Manufacturing, we’ve recently started offering sustainable, plant-based poly bags. They have all the strength and durability of man-made polymers, but they’re recyclable, biodegradable, and reduce fossil fuels by up to 20% — and they’re completely safe for your food storage needs. 

Looking for poly bags for food storage? A-Pac Manufacturing can develop anything you need. From frozen food storage to branded plant-based bags, we offer custom poly bags at no minimum order, with lead times of just 2-3 weeks. Give our team a call or contact us online to learn more.

Sustainable packaging is any type of packaging that minimizes environmental impact throughout all of its life cycle stages: sourcing, development, use, and disposal. By choosing a sustainable packaging solution, you’ll not only do your part in helping the environment, but you’ll experience some of these other benefits as well:

• Reduce your packaging waste
• Lower your shipping costs
• Save money
• Expand your customer base and boost brand loyalty

Sound enticing? Below, we’ll explore some of the most sustainable, cost-effective packaging solutions your company can adopt. 

Best Sustainable and Cost-Effective Packaging Solutions

From recycled plastics to seaweed packaging, there are many unique sustainable packaging solutions on the market. However, there are a few that are more cost-effective than the rest, getting you a little more bang for your buck. 

1. Packaging Made with Recycled Cardboard and Paper

Cardboard boxes and paper bags are an industry favorite for packaging, and since they’re both made from natural materials, they’ve long been applauded for their eco-friendliness. However, in this circumstance, it’s important to remember that a sustainable material must be eco-friendly throughout its entire lifecycle, and one of the flaws of standard cardboard and paper packaging is its sourcing. Each year, millions of trees are cut down and tons of energy is used to produce paper bags — even more energy than is used to make plastic bags. 

Therefore, a more sustainable packaging solution is to source post-consumer or post-industrial recycled cardboard and paper. This is also a cost-effective solution because it’s less expensive to reuse and recycle materials than it is to source new ones. 

2. Packaging Made with Organic Fabrics

Many businesses have started to offer reusable fabric bags, a great sustainable option for a variety of reasons. First, it ends the need to continuously purchase single-use paper or plastic bags. Although a reusable bag will cost you more in the short term, it will reduce your operating costs tremendously in the long term. 

Second, reusable bags can help build brand awareness and loyalty. If you offer a reusable bag with a cool design or company logo on it, customers can show it off to other potential customers who may be interested in your product. 

In order to make fabric reusable bags even more eco-friendly, consider using organic fabric materials, such as: 

• Hemp
• Organic or recycled cotton
• Palm leaves
• Bamboo linen

These materials will biodegrade entirely in about 100 days, instead of the 10,000 years it would take a standard plastic bag to degrade. 

3. Poly Bags Made with Plant-Based Additives

In regards to sustainable and cost-effective packaging solutions, custom poly bags with plant-based additives win in every category. The renewable resources used to manufacture them provide many of the qualities desired in man-made polymers: strength, durability, and affordability. They’re a great option for small business owners like you, looking to boost your customer base, save your money, and help your planet. Here’s why:

• Reduced waste – With custom poly bags, you’re able to customize your quantity and design, ensuring you’ll have the exact number of bags you need, and the exact space you need to fill them appropriately. 
• Lightweight – Poly bags weigh much less than other packaging options, so they’ll save you money on production and shipping costs. 
• Recyclable and biodegradable – Poly bags made with plant-based additives are recyclable in closed-loop systems where the material is known. They’re also biodegradable, reducing the reliance on fossil fuels by up to 20%. 

A-Pac Manufacturing cares about helping small businesses like yours find more sustainable packaging options that won’t break your budget. That’s why we’re now offering NuPlastiQ poly bags to interested customers. NuPlastiQ, a plant-based product, can be mixed with our versatile formula to create durable poly bags with up to 20% less fossil fuels. Contact our team to discuss this eco-friendly packaging solution.