Interpack 2023: CCL demonstrates pressure-sensitive WashOff labels for returnable glass bottles
16 Jun 2023 | CCL Label
Marika Knorr, head of sustainability and communication of F&B at CCL Label, details the company’s label tech explicitly designed for returnable glass bottles. The pressure-sensitive labels shrink and peel off once activated in industrial washing lines, leaving a clean bottle that can be reused. Knorr also tells us about CCL’s EcoFloat polyolefin sleeves developed to boost PET bottle recycling by offering clean separation and high-quality PET flakes.
This is Radhika Sikaria here for packaging insights.
I'm at Interp 2023 in Dusseldorf, Germany.
I'm at the CCR booth and I'm talking to Marika Norr, who is the head of sustainability and communication.
Welcome, Marika.
Could you please introduce yourself and tell us what you're presenting here at the trade show today?
OK, so my name is Marica Noor.
I work for CCL Label and I look after sustainability and communication globally.
What we are showing mainly is our s.
Label portfolio or sustainable label family as we call it, which consists of label and sleeve materials that were especially developed to support recycling of the overall packaging, right?
So what is this latest innovation?
What trends are you tapping into with this?
So the latest trends are reduce, reuse, and recycle.
So let's start with the reduced.
So to reduce waste and.
Ra w you need to recycle it.
So we have like developed special sleeve solutions which is a polyolefin sleeve which is which we call Ecofloat and it was especially developed for PET bottles because it floats.
So you have to understand that if the bottle enters the PET recycling unit, it will get shredded and then afterwards it will go into like a big washing basin and in this washing basin you want to have a.
Density separation, which means that the, the PET flakes that are heavier that sink to the bottom of the basin, whereas like the sleeve material and the labels and everything and the caps that they float to the top of the basin.
So you have a really, really clean separation and you also want like the, the inks to remain on the label so that you also have like clean washing water in the end.
And with this, you can, You get like really high quality PET flex that you then can feed back into a new bottle, so you have like the perfect bottle to bottle recycling, closing the loop was essentially we need to do with all our packaging materials, right, so what are the biggest challenges that the packaging industry is facing right now in terms of closing the loop?
I would say accessibility of the material.
So there needs to be like collection programs put into place in different countries, and it varies very much in the in the different countries.
And it's also, so once you have this collection system in place, then it really depends on design for recycling.
Design for recycling is.
What is designed for recycling, it means that you have like, you take a look at your main packaging materials.
So is it glass, is it plastic?
Is it an aluminum can, and then you decide which decoration material you want to put on there and which caps to use, for example, for bottles, and this all needs to harmonize so that it then can be.
Cycle you also need to like simplify the overall packaging and this is something where we have like good solution where we have organized our portfolio and where we really can help our brand customers to design their packaging so that it can be recycled in the end.
Sounds good.
So with the shrink sleeve that CCL is presenting, what market gap are you fulfilling?
We are fulfilling the market gap that it was before, so before we have to see.
Usually, a lot of brand customers use HGPE bottles, for example, and are now changing over to PET bottles because they are more easily and more widely recycled.
But to do that, you don't want to use, like, for example, they used to use like PETG, so, for example, that then would get into the PET.
So this new material actually helps the separation.
So this is something we are actually tapping into design for recycling and the separation of the materials in the end.
OK, so could you please explain the label technology to us?
OK, so this label technology is called a wash off label and was developed especially for returnable glass bottles and as you can imagine now with the reused.
And recycle with all of the initiatives going on, it's like very important to have a label that supports the reuse of the bottle.
So this label was especially developed for returnable glass bottles, and what happens is that once the glass is returned to the bottler, they put it on the washing line first, of course, to get it nice and clean, and in this capacity.
You will wash the bottle at like 65 to 85 degrees, and in this process, the label is activated and it starts to shrink.
So it shrinks and it pulls itself, it kind of rolls up and it pulls itself off the bottle.
So this really supports like a very clean separation of the label on the bottle, and it's very important that the inks and the adhesive remain on the.
On the label so that you also have like very clean washing water and no contamination so that you don't have to change the washing water very often, right?
So does the label get tampered in a regular heat or does it require industrial heat?
That's like a heat 65 to 85 degrees is something that you actually only encounter in professional washing lines.
Also, it needs like the water activation.
The temperature to activate.
So yeah, no worries.
Like if you put it in a cooler, if you use it at barbecues, if you put it into an ice bucket, nothing will happen.
The label will remain on the bottle, no worries.
So it's really a solution for recyclability then.
It's a solution for returnable glass bottle systems and therefore reuse of the glass bottle and recyclability in the end.
Yes, perfect.
All right, thank you so much for joining us today, Mario.
Thank you.
Thank you.
