Aug 9, 2024 - 3-5 minutes
Keep Pace: Secure Bonding at Speed With Environmentally Friendly Packaging
Today’s consumer goods packaging lines are increasingly complex. So is meeting demands for increased sustainability. As you shift to highly recycled materials, maintaining fast line speeds while ensuring a secure seal can be difficult. If this issue sounds familiar, Bostik has the solution.
Demand Grows for the Use of Recycled Cardboard
As the number of ecommerce sales continues to rise, shoppers consider the impact that shipping materials can have on the environment. According to one survey1, paper/cardboard packaging is commonly preferred by customers over other materials, both for being home compostable and easier to recycle. The use of sustainable materials has even been shown by some studies to coincide with a net rise in sales.2
This comes as no surprise. The recycling rate of corrugated in the United States has been over 90% for the last decade and was placed at 93.6% in 2022.3 And yet, embracing a more circular cardboard lifecycle for packaging is not without its complications for manufacturers and converters.
Why Bonding Highly Recycled Stock Is So Difficult
Perhaps this situation is familiar to you: You want to use environmentally friendly packaging materials. After all, it means using fewer natural resources and more sustainable raw materials in your primary and secondary packaging.
However, after making the switch, you see an increase in pop-opens and other bonding issues. Both can make it challenging to keep your production lines moving fast. Efficiency drops—and may even risk your ability to meet delivery expectations.
Lower-Performance Adhesives Aren’t Up to the Task
There’s solid science behind this difficulty to bond. Environmentally friendly corrugates contain shorter paper fibers than virgin material. These truncated fibers impact the adhesive’s ability to successfully bond and seal the package. The more times that fibers pass through mechanical recycling processes, the shorter they become.
Some adhesives simply aren’t able to successfully wet out paper products with these shorter fibers. This causes pop-opens on the line. Downtime is increased while performance and productivity are decreased. That’s why it can be difficult for manufacturers to use environmentally friendly packaging materials and maintain fast output speeds.
The Carton Sealing Solution for Sustainable Cardboard
This Customer Switched to Kizen® and Never Looked Back
Don’t just take our word for why to choose Kizen. One Bostik customer that is also a leading food manufacturer was having trouble with its adhesive on highly recycled packaging materials. After switching to Kizen, the manufacturer experienced:
- 4X faster production line speeds
- Fewer equipment maintenance issues
- Reduced package pop-opens
- Improved package aesthetics
Better yet, Kizen was easy for them to test and trial on their already-running production lines. They were finally able to reduce environmental impacts and meet sustainability initiatives. Kizen was the packaging solution they needed.
Discover What Kizen Can Do for You
Learn how you, too, can successfully meet the growing need for sustainable packaging … and make package pop-opens a thing of the past.
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All information contained herein is believed to be accurate as of the date of publication, is provided “as-is” and is subject to change without notice. To review our full U.S. Legal Disclaimer, visit: https://bostik.com/us/en_US/privacy-policy/legal-disclaimer
CODE: EOL-24B11
1Commissioned by Two Sides North America and conducted by international research firm Toluna. https://twosidesna.org/US/survey-shows-u-s-consumers-believe-paper-based-packaging-is-better-for-the-environment-than-other-packaging-materials/
2 https://nielseniq.com/global/en/insights/report/2023/consumers-care-about-sustainability-and-back-it-up-with-their-wallets/
3 https://www.statista.com/statistics/605383/recovery-rate-of-old-corrugated-containers-in-the-united-states/