Recent advances in poly (vinyl alcohol)/natural polymer based films for food packaging applications: A review

The usability and effectiveness of plastic polymers are increasingly changing with advances in technology and research. Poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVOH) based materials have been widely applied in various fields owing to their biological and physical properties such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, antimicrobial ability, non-toxicity, and easy film-forming ability. PVOH based films have been widely applied in food packaging applications. Literatures have been mostly focused on synthetic PVOH or PVOH based nanomaterials for food packaging applications. With the advancement of polymer science and engineering, natural polymers are highly demandable due to their biodegradability and helping to achieve the goal of an environment-friendly packaging system. Therefore, this review mainly focuses on the recent development of PVOH/natural polymer-based films for use in food packaging applications. Further, this review gives the insight about the PVOH/bio-waste and fruit peel-based composite films. Finally, the research trends regarding PVOH films were also discussed, along with the metrics of publications.