Turning waste into a resource and adopting a ‘pure circularity’ approach is a strong focus for label materials supplier UPM Raflatac, which has developed the RafCycle concept to not only recycle its own waste but also to offer customers and brand owners a recycling solution to give their label waste new life.
Labels are one of the most ubiquitous packaging consumables. Used to brand almost every product imaginable – from food,
beverages, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals through to tyres, tools and oil cans – labels carry important regulatory and nutritional information, convey a brand story to deliver on engagement, and are also the bearer of important security codes and devices for authentication and proof of provenance.
Their value in the marketing toolkit is unquestioned, however, as an added layer to consumer packaging, labels can produce an invisible waste stream. For label stock manufacturers, there’s waste created during coating and trimming; for label printers there’s matrix and start up waste; and for brand owners, there’s release liner waste.
Most labels in the market today are supplied with a paper release liner, also called glassine paper, a material that is problematic to recycle and thus often ends up in landfill.
With RafCycle, paper release liners can be desiliconised and recycled back into pulp and papers. UPM Communication Papers, a sister division of UPM Raflatac, is well positioned to support in this circular loop. As the world’s biggest user of recovered paper in graphic papers, UPM can engage its extensive collection network to facilitate cost-effective release paper recycling.
“The re-use of recovered wood fibres in label and graphic paper products is a closed-loop solution and a shining example of sustainability at its best,” says Carol Kilcullen-Lawrence, sustainability consultant to UPM Raflatac.
To put this into perspective, the liner waste collected between 2014 and 2021 is equivalent to the weight of over two Eiffel towers. Spread out in a one-meter-wide strip, it would take you from Earth to the Moon. Concretely, however, it means that 280 000 trees are left for other uses. The fossil CO2e emissions avoided is the equivalent of 641 long-haul flights compared to the waste ending up in landfill.
AUSTRALIAN UPTAKE
In Australia, Sydney-based label printer Wedderburn has pioneered the adoption of the RafCycle concept, becoming the first certified user of RafCycle in Oceania.
The company has already collected four container loads (55 tonnes) of paper label liner for recycling from its end-user customers
Receiving the certification on behalf of the company at LabelExpo Europe in 2019, Petrina Bint, general manager Labels at Wedderburn, said, “Getting this over the line was a highlight of my career. I can’t wait to see this as the norm and many other label companies offering the service.”
In Queensland, UPM Raflatac has also deployed RafCycle in partnership with other customers and end-users, and earlier this year the first container of paper label release liners was shipped from the UPM Raflatac Brisbane warehouse to UPM’s recycling facility in Europe. Over ten tonnes of waste have been collected from the Queensland RafCycle partners, to be desiliconised and recycled into pulp again, which can be used for creating new paper label materials or as magazine stock.
“It’s great to be able to do our part to close the recycling loop and achieve a truly sustainable circular economy and support our customers, Multi-Color Queensland and Label Plus Queensland, by addressing the liner waste challenge together,” says Damian Thomas, UPM Raflatac’s Queensland sales manager.
“This is the first truly sustainable solution for glassine liner in this region. With the RafCycle technology, glassine liner can be recycled up to seven times, and can be reused as pulp for new liner stock again, so a full closed loop,” Kilcullen-Lawrence says, noting that this is an important step as Australia moves to meet the 2025 National Packaging Targets, in which all packaging has to be recyclable, reusable or compostable by that date. And this ties in with UPM’s ambition to support a circular economy globally and here in Australia.
While it can be argued that shipping liner waste offshore to be recycled is ‘emissions intensive’, Kilcullen-Lawrence tells PKN that recycling the label liner, including transport overseas, is still 12-18 per cent less CO2e emissions intensive compared to landfilling it in Australia, where unfortunately a significant quantity is still currently disposed of.
With RafCycle now finding traction in Australia, UPM Raflatac is enabling converters and end users to reduce waste disposal costs, meet regulatory requirements, achieve landfill reduction and reduce their overall environmental footprint. And that’s progress in anybody’s book.
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This article has been published in the September-October print issue of PKN Packaging News, on page 43-44.
You can download a guide to the RafCycle concept here and learn about an APAC case study here.
