Less CO2, more transparency

Press reports Self-adhesive Materials

29. November 2010

HERMA becomes the first in the industry to publish figures on the carbon footprint of adhesive material and labels.
They show that film release liners, for instance, produce twice as much CO2 emissions as paper substrates.

In the debate about sustainable products and production, HERMA has now disclosed additional facts. The company (based in Filderstadt, Germany) has become the first in its sector to publish data concerning the carbon footprint of adhesive material and labels. The figures indicate how much of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) arises both at individual points of the value-added chain and with certain finished label products. According to the company, a standard release liner generates approximately 60 grams of CO2 per square metre; PET-based substrates, however, produce more than twice this much, namely 130 grams of CO2 per square metre. If film is chosen for both the release liner and the label material, 300 grams of CO2 per square metre are given off, compared to only 160 grams in the case of a paper/paper combination. This gap is naturally less pronounced when the overall values for ready-printed labels are examined, since the results for production, printing and transportation are similar for both material combinations. Nevertheless, a film label produced on a film release liner still emits 60 per cent more CO2 during the entire manufacturing process (400 g/m2) than a paper label on a paper release liner (250 g/m2).

"These figures are based on detailed internal calculations and estimates, but also incorporate the know-how and groundwork of a number of external experts," comments HERMA managing director Dr. Thomas Baumgärtner. "What we are talking about here, of course, are average values, which can undoubtedly fluctuate during the actual production process. However, as regards the fundamental differences between the two materials, paper and film, the order of magnitude is unlikely to change substantially."

Accepted worldwide

The carbon footprint has gained acceptance throughout the world as a means of establishing the extent to which different products and services contribute to climate change. By creating transparency and comparability, it provides users, buyers and customers with an important basis for their decisions."The carbon footprint offers a further, substantial argument for using paper, which is a renewable raw material, as the basis for release liner material," stresses Dr. Baumgärtner. Only recently, HERMA became the first self-adhesive material manufacturer in the world to start recycling silicone-coated release liner in a practically waste-free process. In cooperation with the Cycle4Green initiative and the Austrian paper manufacturer Lenzing Papier, the waste liner is used to produce new, high-quality label material or release liner. "This initiative brings us closer to implementing the cradle to cradle principle of using materials in a more or less continuous cycle," says the HERMA managing director.