Packaging, Labels, and Sustainability
In our modern, convenience-oriented world, labels and packaging play an essential role in protecting products, extending shelf life, and providing critical information to consumers. They also help create and communicate brand identities and market differentiation, which are important for driving business in the consumer marketplace. However, the environmental impact of packaging waste, especially plastic packaging waste, is an increasing and urgent concern due to its contribution to pollution and resource depletion. With vast amounts of packaging being incinerated, ending up in landfills or, worse, in the open environment, key waterways, and the ocean each year, the need for sustainable packaging solutions has never been greater.
A Circular Economy for Packaging
The concept of the circular economy involves a fundamental shift from the traditional linear ‘take-make-dispose’ model, which is inherently waste-generating, to one that minimizes waste and pollution by keeping products and materials in use and helping to regenerate natural systems.
This idea has most recently been popularized and promoted by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which established the global Plastics Pact Network – a series of collaborative initiatives among key packaging stakeholders to implement circular economy solutions for plastic. The Network aims to eliminate problematic and unnecessary plastic use and ensure that all plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable, or compostable. Recyclability is a major focus, and it is the subject of increasing packaging-related legislation around the world.
Packaging Design Guidance for Circularity and the Association of Plastic Recyclers
In line with the principles of a circular economy, packaging design guidance emphasizes the reduction of environmental impact, specifically in terms of considerations for eventual material recovery, including collection, sortation, and recycling. In North America, and with increasing global influence and scope, the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) is the leading authority on improving plastics recycling. Its membership covers the entire recycling value chain, from design and component materials to collection, recovery, and remanufacturing, which is important given the need for collaboration and connection between the various players towards achieving the end goal.
The APR’s Design Guide® is among its most important resources, a living and openly available reference framework for designing and testing recyclable plastic packaging to support the transition to a circular economy. The Guide outlines preferred design practices by individual material streams, details performance criteria for specific design and decorative elements, and provides corresponding test protocols, all aimed at increasing the quality and quantity of recovered plastics. Products, processes, or technologies that demonstrate compliance with APR guidance and compatibility with recycling processes can be formally designated through the APR Design® for Recyclability Recognition program, a highly coveted third-party validation applicable for complete packages and individual package components.
Impact of Pigments, Printing Inks, Coatings, and Adhesives
The selection of pigments, inks, coatings, and adhesives is critical in label and packaging designs. Though these components comprise only a small portion of the overall package, they enable functionality and aesthetics and impact eventual recyclability. Here are some of the ways they can interfere with an effective recycling process:
- Pigments and Inks: Some pigments and inks can hinder recycling processes, despite their important contribution to a package’s important information content, color and branding. For instance, certain pigments and inks may impede the proper sortation of plastics into the appropriate material streams. They may also leave unacceptable color on the recycled plastics or in the recycling process wastewater, or they may degrade the mechanical properties of the recovered plastic.
- Coatings: Coatings are used to protect packaging from damage and to enhance visual appeal. However, coatings that are not compatible with recycling processes can leave residues and prevent the recovery of underlying materials.
- Adhesives: Adhesives are essential to hold different parts of packaging together, but they may pose challenges during recycling if they cannot be easily removed from substrates and leave behind sticky residues.
Sustainability-Enabling Solutions
In response to the industry’s emphasis on positive end-of-life options for plastic labels and packaging, raw material suppliers are providing recycle-friendly solutions to the packaging industry. Suppliers have designed non-interfering alternatives to metallic and carbon black pigments and inks that inhibit proper material sortation. These new alternatives allow proper detection of the pigmented or printed plastic packaging type for subsequent transfer to an appropriate recycling center. The expense of detection and sortation is a significant barrier to increasing the amount of recycled plastic. The installation of more effective and efficient sortation technologies is key to achieving desired increases in plastic recycling. This cannot happen until the supply chain transitions to sortable and recyclable plastics and regulations justify the construction of more MRFs (Material Recovery Facilities) to handle the increased demand.
Another type of recycling-compatible technology development is ink that can be removed (or de-inked) from printed plastic substrates as filterable particles. The released particles can then be efficiently separated from the recycled plastic and process water to produce high quality recyclates without creating wastewater issues. This deinkable ink concept has been endorsed by the APR as a preferred technology.
Ink chemistries have also been developed that are tolerant to the high temperatures that are characteristic of extrusion steps in some recycling processes, so that these printing components do not create problematic byproducts and defects in the recovered materials.
Similarly, for coatings and adhesives, the key is to avoid residues in recycled plastics that affect their quality and eventual use in new packaging applications. Suppliers of these components have designed materials that can be removed cleanly from labels and packaging substrates during standard recycling process steps without negative impact on the recovered material quality or the recycling process.
To guide these material developments, the APR Design Guide® and its associated test protocols are invaluable resources, ensuring that critical packaging elements are enablers rather than disablers of the end-of-life recovery processes.
The Future of Sustainable Packaging
Tackling the plastic packaging waste problem is imperative for the entire industry, and all players along the value chain must collaborate to deliver solutions. Careful selection of even seemingly small components, like printing inks, coatings, and adhesives, can greatly impact the ability to achieve packaging recovery and circularity. Innovative material solutions are available today, because for packaging sustainability, the future is now.
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Dr. Nikola Juhasz is the Global Technical Director for Sustainability at Sun Chemical, where she engages with internal and external stakeholders to formulate sustainability-driven technical strategies and oversees implementation of the corresponding innovation and product development programs across all of Sun’s pigments, inks, coatings and adhesives product lines and technology platforms. She represents Sun Chemical at several global cross-industry organizations focused on sustainability and the future of packaging, including the US-based Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), and is responsible for driving collaborations towards circularity and end of life management.
Prior to joining Sun Chemical in 2016, Dr. Juhasz spent over 20 years in various positions of R&D leadership in the diversified chemicals, polymers and materials industries. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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