HERMA was honored with the “Green Packaging Star Award” during Fachpack 2021, together with schaefer-etiketten and Polifilm Extrusion. The three companies received the prestigious Austrian award, which has been awarded for 13 years, in the “Sustainable production processes” category for a joint project.
Herma's Special Wash-off Adhesive
The focus was on how recycling processes for plastic packaging can be optimized with relatively little effort – and how labels can be created that have practically the same efficiency as a similar product made of new PE granulate. Herma's contribution was to develop a special wash-off adhesive. This ensures that polyolefin (PE/PP) packaging labels can be washed off without leaving any residue under suitable washing conditions.
In this way, adhesives and printing inks simply disappear from the flow of recyclable materials. For example, shampoo bottles then form the base material for very pure granulate. This is processed by Polifilm Extrusion into high-quality films, which can later be refined into HERMA self-adhesive materials, which schaefer-etiketten uses in turn to produce labels for shampoo bottles, for instance.
Post-consumer Recycled Material-based Labels
Both the wash-off adhesive and probably the first PE labels worldwide, whose PE content is made entirely of post-consumer recycled material, are already being used commercially to a greater extent.
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With this project, we were able to show very clearly how to make a difference with relatively manageable effort so as to create or optimize expedient recycling processes,” states Ralf Drache, sales director of Herma self-adhesive materials. The “Green Packaging Star” is a joint initiative between the trade journal Kompack, Packforce Austria and Altstoff Recycling Austria (ARA).
Source: Herma