The new olefinic hotmelt adhesive can mechanically recycle polyolefin filmic labels and polypropylene (PP) or polyethylene (PE) packaging together in one stream

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The new olefinic hotmelt adhesive is intended for chilled food applications. (Credit: Avery Dennison Corporation)

Adhesive manufacturing company Avery Dennison and US-based Dow have jointly developed a sustainable new hotmelt label adhesive solution to recycle filmic labels and packaging.

The new olefinic hotmelt adhesive can mechanically recycle polyolefin filmic labels and polypropylene (PP) or polyethylene (PE) packaging together in one stream.

The first-of-its-kind adhesive is approved by the cross-industry initiative Recyclass for recycling in the HDPE coloured stream – Class B.

According to Avery Dennison, the hotmelt adhesives offer better performance in labels for chilled applications like food in comparison to standard hotmelts that lower the usability of recycled PP/PE material.

Dow Packaging & Specialty Plastics global marketing manager Imran Munshi said: “It is Dow’s goal to deliver 3 million metric tons per year of circular and renewable solutions by 2030.

“Collaborations like this will help accelerate our contributions towards a circular economy for plastic packaging.”

The new olefinic hotmelt is based on the same chemistry as PP/PE packaging. The latest product, when combined with a polyolefin face stock, the label and packaging can be treated as a mono-material and recycled together.

This provides better recyclability than conventional hotmelts while maintaining the performance, the adhesive manufacturing company claimed.

Avery Dennison said that the development of the new adhesive was powered by its design-for-recycling thinking and supported by Dow’s polymer science expertise.

The olefinic hotmelt adhesive is based on Dow’s Affinity GA polyolefin plastomers and sold by Avery Dennison under the name CF3050 in the Europe, Middle East, and North Africa (EMENA) regions.

Avery Dennison Materials Group EMENA senior research associate Jarkko Pitko said: “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 deliver innovations that help reduce waste, enable the circularity of plastics, and advance the circular economy.”

In December last year, Avery Dennison announced reusable plastic packaging and performance pooling solutions firm Tosca as its European partner for pooled plastic pallets.