Q&A: How Bostik’s APR Involvement Can Benefit Your Label Manufacturing

Learn how Bostik's involvement with the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) enhances more sustainable adhesives in label manufacturing. Read about evolving recycling regulations, adhesive solutions, and how APR Design® Guidance helps reduce environmental footprints.

Adhesive coaters and label producers like you know the importance of finding ways to enhance sustainability in your end-use products; however, you may find it difficult to stay in-the-know about evolving regulations and trends on a regular basis while trying to run daily operations. This is why it can be valuable to work with suppliers, including your adhesive supplier, who are actively involved in trade organizations that provide guidance on ways to reduce your environmental footprint.

At Bostik, we work closely with sustainability groups, such as the Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR), to help ensure our adhesive solutions offer recycling capabilities for you. In this Q&A with Lauren Alexander, Bostik’s Business Development Manager for Labels in Advanced Packaging and Converting, learn how Bostik’s APR involvement can benefit your label manufacturing.

Q: For those who don’t know, what is the Association of Plastic Recyclers, and why is it important?

A: The Association of Plastic Recyclers (APR) is an international non-profit focused on improving recycling for plastics. APR staff is comprised of experts across the recycling value chain with extensive knowledge about plastic recycling and how it can be effective.

Together, they provide design for recyclability for the plastic industry. As noted on their website, the APR’s expertise helps manufacturers understand how to:

Provide clear direction to end users on what materials can be reused, helping them feel motivated to recycle plastic packaging and products.
Optimize design capabilities so manufacturers understand what packaging formats will be compatible with the recycling system.
Strengthen demand by removing barriers and creating incentives that motivate manufacturers to incorporate recycled content into their product packaging.
Create resources such as data, research and communication tools that manufacturers can access to understand the value of making their products recyclable.

The APR Design® Recognition Program provides third-party validation that a package or packaging component’s design is compatible with the North American recycling system. It includes multiple categories of test protocols based on plastic resin types (PET, HDPE, PP), as the resin type impacts testing results and recycling capabilities. Test results are further reviewed by an APR technical panel, and the product being tested is compatible with clear, rigid PET, HDPE, rigid PP or flexible PE.

Brand owners increasingly require their packages to receive APR Design® Recognition to help ensure end users can recycle it. Therefore, it’s important for adhesive coaters and label producers to develop labels that follow the APR Design® Guidance to maintain business and support a more sustainable society.

Companies like Bostik that manufacture materials used in plastic packaging, such as label adhesives, look to follow APR Design® Guidance to help ensure consistency across products and recycling stream effectiveness. At Bostik, we feel the APR Design® Guidance is especially important to us as we strive to help our customers’ packaging reclaim high value materials and increase the circular yield.

Q: How is Bostik involved in APR, and how does that involvement influence your label adhesives?

A: Bostik is a member of APR, which means we attend several meetings a year to learn about how plastic recycling is evolving. These meetings also allow us to connect with other APR members from different parts of the label industry, such as printers or ink suppliers. Talking with them helps us know how other parts of the value chain also work towards increasing label sustainability. We also learn about the challenges they face. As an adhesive supplier, these conversations help us understand different priorities and how we can help each other reach our sustainability goals.

In terms of how this involvement influences our label adhesives:

The APR covers many specific details about plastic as a material and ways to recycle it. Label adhesives comprise just one facet of it; however, as an adhesive solutions expert, Bostik uses the APR’s insight about plastic recycling trends and pain points and implements it into our product development.

Specifically, the APR meetings help our Bostik team assess how the latest topics in recycling impact our adhesives and what that means for our formulations. We’re continuously striving for our label adhesives to receive APR Design® Recognition, as it helps provide assurance to adhesive coaters and label producers that our adhesives meet key recycling criteria; it also saves them valuable time and resources, providing a head start in their qualification process, since we’ve already completed the testing. To do this, we often contact an APR expert to assess our products. Connecting with an APR expert and getting their thoughts on our products helps us reassure our customers; however, it also helps us feel reassured that we are on the right track in helping sustainability efforts.

For example, being part of the APR helped us identify the gap in label adhesive temperature performance for wash-off applications, which led us to formulate an APR Recognized, all-temperature, wash-off adhesive for PET bottles and trays.

With the APR’s expertise, we can more easily do our part as an adhesive supplier and develop solutions that meet key recycling initiatives for adhesive coaters and label producers.

Q: How does Bostik’s APR involvement help guide your conversations with coaters and label producers about their adhesive selection?

A: With any conversation, we like to bring awareness to adhesive coaters and label producers about what’s happening with recycling and how their adhesive solution can contribute to their label recycling capabilities. Many adhesive coaters and label producers may not know the details about recycling, because they are focused on their label construction, and recycling is just one part of the puzzle. By connecting with coaters and label producers, we help them consider how materials work together and how adhesives play a role in label sustainability.

Q: Are there any topics you feel the APR is focused on that you recommend coaters and label producers think about, too?

A: As coaters and label producers likely know, laws can vary from state to state regarding plastic packaging’s recycling capabilities. These differing laws can pose a challenge when designing their labels; label producers are encouraged to track changes. Since PET can be recycled numerous times without losing quality, laws are pushing for more recycled PET in products; that’s why we anticipate more legislation to take place for recycling bottles, thermoforms and clamshells. Talking with brands about how to create uniform PET packaging that can apply to even the most stringent recycling standards may help them avoid complexities with some states so that their packaging can be broadly sold across states.

Q: What else would you like coaters and label producers to know about Bostik and APR?

A: Our Bostik experts continually strive to find solutions that help alleviate coaters’ and label producers’ pain points and address unmet needs, stemming from what we learn by being part of the APR. One of the reasons we can do this is because we are the adhesives solution segment of Arkema, offering a robust portfolio of pressure sensitive adhesives (PSAs). With a range that includes hot melt, waterborne acrylic, specialty solution acrylic and UV acrylic PSA technologies, we have the ability to explore different ways we can help coaters and label producers increase recyclability with our adhesive offerings. Further, with our technical support, we can work with manufacturers to determine suitable options for their specific product development needs.

Are you interested in learning more about our APR membership or how label adhesives can play a role in enhancing your recycling capabilities? Contact a Bostik expert to learn about our APR involvement and how we can use it to help with adhesives in your label construction.

To learn more about the Association of Plastic Recyclers, visit their website here.