To create sustainable packaging, as an industry, we must adopt label technologies that reflect a whole systems approach – from materials design to end use – and work in harmony with the existing recycling streams. Avery Dennison tells us how its portfolio can support this.
Australia’s environment ministers met in Sydney to work together to achieve a ‘Nature Positive Australia’. Included in their released communiqué was the objective to “Shift Australia toward a safer, circular economy by putting in place a new packaging regulatory scheme that will for the first time, develop mandatory packaging design obligations, so packaging is designed to minimise waste and be recovered, reused, recycled and reprocessed”.
Studies have shown that the majority of consumers are willing to adopt or pay more for products that prioritise sustainable packaging. As a result, brands are recognising the need to meet consumer demands, stay ahead of regulatory measures and make meaningful contributions to the environment.
Sustainable ADvantage
Avery Dennison is actively meeting this challenge with its Sustainable ADvantage portfolio – a comprehensive range of products, services and resources, designed to improve the environmental impact of packaging while retaining the same or similar performance compared with traditional products, often without costing more.
In this way, the company is contributing toward its 2030 sustainability commitments, specifically its goals to reduce carbon emissions and create more sustainable products and solutions, while helping its customers meet their own targets and Scope 3 reporting requirements. Avery Dennison’s size and scale enables it to offer sustainable alternatives to customers at price parity and advance innovation across the industry.
More recycled content
Increasing recycled content in the manufacturing of labels is not only an important packaging consideration for meeting sustainability goals, but it has also become an obligation for packaging industry players toward building a circular economy while complying with emerging regulations.
Avery Dennison is committed to ensuring that 100 per cent of its standard label material products will contain a minimum of 30 per cent recycled or renewable content by 2030. The company is taking bold steps to reduce resource depletion and greenhouse gas emissions by innovating packaging solutions to contain more biobased and renewable materials.
By replacing virgin materials with recycled content materials, Avery Dennison is reducing waste and the reliance on fossil fuel without compromising on label converting and dispensing performance or design aesthetics. Its offerings include facestocks and liners that contain 15 per cent to 100 per cent post-consumer or post-industrial recycled content or agricultural waste.
Harnessing biomass balance
Avery Dennison has taken an innovative approach to introducing recycled content into its adhesives, known as the biomass balance approach – adhesives with bio-content (non-food content that can be replenished or regrown through a natural process, preserving limited natural resources) – available for both hotmelt and emulsion adhesives in its standard portfolio, without the need for requalification.
The biomass balance and biobased adhesives contain 30 per cent raw materials originating from renewable resources, providing more sustainable paper and film labels at no added cost and with no sacrifice on product performance.
Reduce to prevent waste
Making reductions at the source is a critical way of preventing waste and is the most environmentally preferred strategy. Thinner and lighter labels mean less natural resources are used and operational costs are significantly reduced compared with conventional products. With more labels per roll, less is definitely more – resulting in longer machine uptime due to fewer roll changes as well as minimised storage space and more efficient transportation, meaning less CO2 emissions.
Nearly a century ago, Avery Dennison invented the pressure-sensitive label. As a key element of modern packaging, it’s indispensable. Yet a considerable portion of a conventional label – its release liner – immediately gets scrapped upon application. As one of the latest products in Sustainable ADvantage, AD XeroLinr DT is a direct thermal solution with the complete elimination of liners, offering huge sustainability and productivity advantages.
To get the best of both worlds, AD Flex+ offers a thin, semi-squeezable construction that combines the best features of rigid and conformable films – providing excellent clarity and converting performance. It is 30 per cent thinner than PE85 (the most commonly used in the industry), offers stronger dimensional stability compared to PE, and delivers improved print registration and die-cutting performance on press as well as a “no-label” look on semi-squeeze PET bottles.
Closing the loop
Equally important are solutions that enable the reuse and recycling of the entire packaging. For example, AD CleanFlake features a breakthrough adhesive technology that eliminates contamination of PET plastic by having the label and container neatly part ways during the recycling process – allowing PET to be continuously recycled back into food-grade containers. This range also offers film labels combined with emulsion acrylic adhesive that enhance the recyclability of monomaterial, high-density polyethylene containers.
Avery Dennison’s solutions for enabling PET and HDPE recycling have been certified by the Association of Plastic Recyclers, have won numerous awards, and are verified by recyclers for their reliability on enhancing the recycling process.
Value chain responsibility
Avery Dennison provides products sourced from a supply chain that show care for people and the environment, including paper certified by the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) and other organisations. More than 80 per cent of Avery Dennison’s paper products are made with FSC-certified wood fibre, the widest selection in the industry.
Recycling liner waste is also a priority. Although necessary for protecting face and adhesive, liners are immediately discarded following label application. In order to achieve the desired label cut, matrix waste is also unavoidable. To address this, Avery Dennison is taking responsibility for managing solid waste that is generated beyond its facilities. With its AD Circular recycling program, liner and matrix waste are guaranteed to be recycled.
Understanding the need for its customers to better understand the environmental effects of the products they use, Avery Dennison has partnered with the Carbon Trust on a bespoke carbon footprinting tool that offers a more thorough measurement of the impact of its products using primary data for raw materials and operations. This allows it to quantify carbon impacts on a product level with more certainty for customer product selection and development, and greenhouse gas (GHG) accounting.
By advancing a sustainable supply chain, Avery Dennison is getting closer to realising a net zero economy. Join the company on this meaningful journey to drive change across the industry.
This article was first published in the September-October 2023 print issue of PKN Packaging News, p14.
