Breakthrough innovation of hotmelt label adhesive to enhance packaging recycling – Avery Dennison and Dow
Dow and Avery Dennison have jointly developed a creative and sustainable hotmelt label adhesive solution that enables polyolefin film labels and polypropylene (PP) or polyethylene (PE) packaging to be mechanically recycled together in one stream.
Sustainable hotmelt label adhesive
The adhesive is the foremost on the label market and is authorized by Recyclass for recycling in the HDPE colored stream – Class B.
Hotmelt adhesives deliver excellent performance in labels for chilled applications (such as food), but standard hotmelts decrease the usability of recycled PP/PE material. Due to this new olefinic hotmelt being based on the same chemistry as PP/PE packaging, when combined with a polyolefin facestock, the label and packaging can be treated as a mono-material and recycled. It, therefore, presents better recyclability than standard hot melts without compromising performance.
AFFINITY™ GA Polymers
The new adhesive’s development was driven by Avery Dennison’s design-for-recycling thinking and made possible by Dow’s polymer science expertise. It is based on AFFINITY™ GA Polymers from Dow and sold by Avery Dennison under the name CF3050 in the Europe, Middle East, and North Africa region (EMENA) part.
“The joint launch of this new olefinic hotmelt is a great example of how collaborating with partners across the supply chain, like Dow, is key to delivering innovations that help reduce waste, enable the circularity of plastics, and advance the circular economy,” says Jarkko Pitko, senior research associate at Avery Dennison Materials Group EMENA.
“Dow’s goal is to deliver 3 million metric tons per year of circular and renewable solutions by 2030,” adds Imran Munshi, global marketing manager of Dow Packaging & Specialty Plastics. “Collaborations like this will help accelerate our contributions towards a circular economy for plastic packaging.”
