Jan 21, 2025 - 3-5 minutes
Designing for Sustainability: Why You Should Consider an Adhesive’s End-of-Life Impact

Learn how adhesives can enhance product sustainability by improving recycling stream effectiveness and reducing end-of-life impact. Learn about the benefits of wash-off and compostable adhesives in promoting a circular economy and achieving high performance.
Like many manufacturers, you may be looking to increase your product’s overall sustainability levels. Designing to reduce its end-of-life impact is one of the ways to achieve this. However, you may not realize that while adhesives often account for a small volume of the finished product, they can affect the entire product’s environmental footprint when the time comes to dispose of it.
As part of our Designing for Sustainability series, find out how adhesives influence a product’s end-of-life impact and how to better design for sustainability.
Adhesive Factors That Influence End-of-Life Impact
Recycling Stream Effectiveness
In certain applications, when not removed properly, adhesives can compromise recycling stream effectiveness. For example:
Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) bottles and trays can be recycled and repurposed into other PET-based products; this contributes to overall circularity. However, if the bottle or tray uses labels with adhesives that are unable to properly wash off from the product during the agitation process, then the label’s materials, such as the paper, inks and coatings, can cause recycling stream contamination. Ultimately, this can render recycled polyethylene terephthalate (rPET) to have reduced clarity as well as weakened strength and overall structure. While it’s possible that the contaminated rPET can still be turned into other recycled items, such as clothing fibers or carpets, it can no longer contribute to PET circularity.
Additionally, polyethylene (PE) film is designed to be recycled and turned into second or third generational packaging. However, certain cold seals may influence PE recycling stream effectiveness as stated in this article and render recycled PE film unusable at the end of the original packaging’s life. This is because they may cause gels, and therefore holes, to form when blowing recycled PE resins into film, which can hinder the film’s appearance and functionality. Certain cold seals may also cause newly recycled flexible PE to lose its rigidity and cause it to be unusable for applications that require specific film tension. Further, they may decrease recycled PE film properties, making it unfit for its intended end-use application and leading to waste.
Solution: Use Adhesives That Mitigate Contamination
To help improve PET circularity, manufacturers should consider an adhesive that offers wash-off capabilities across application and temperature ranges. This helps ensure that PET containers can be easily separated from adhesive labels during recycling, reducing contamination and improving recycled PET quality.
It’s also important for manufacturers to consider adhesives that have passed third-party testing protocol, such as those established by the Association of Plastic Recyclers or Recylclass. These protocols evaluate adhesive compatibility with the recycling process, ensuring that adhesives do not negatively impact recycled materials. For cold seals, they can consult this article that details how to create a PE film packaging structure that passes the tests.
By using adhesives that meet these stringent standards, manufacturers can promote the recycling of PET and other plastics, contributing to a more sustainable packaging industry.
Additional Way to Enhance Recycling Stream Effectiveness
Another way to alleviate this issue is to create monomaterial, uniform products whenever possible. This means that all components, including the adhesives, are of the same chemistry backbone to facilitate streamlined recycling. For example, industrial carpets are often made with polyester carpet fibers; therefore, choosing a polyester-based carpet adhesive over a latex-based adhesive helps enable the entire carpet to be recyclable and reduce landfill waste. Creating monomaterial products reduces the complexity of the recycling process, making it more efficient and cost-effective.
Decomposition
While many adhesives can deteriorate over time, their composition as well as biological and environmental conditions can cause them to take centuries to do so, hindering the end-use product’s ability to break down, too. This can contribute to landfill waste and trash found in oceans.
Easy material separation, however, helps with recycling efficiencies, resource conservation, energy reduction and more. However, it can be challenging to achieve this separation due to several factors, including complex materials and chosen adhesives.
Solution: Use Compostable Adhesives
When applicable, manufacturers should consider adhesives designed specifically to break down more quickly and naturally, such as those that can be used in compostable packaging applications. Compostable adhesives are formulated to be compatible with large-scale composting systems, integrating seamlessly to break down without leaving harmful residues behind.
By choosing compostable adhesives, manufacturers support the circular economy by reducing waste and minimizing environmental impact. Compostable packaging, such as food containers and bags, can be safely disposed of in composting facilities, turning into nutrient-rich compost.
How Bostik Can Help
As the adhesive solutions segment of Arkema, Bostik prioritizes the end-of-life impact of our adhesives. Our product development process includes rigorous testing so that our adhesives meet sustainability standards while also providing high performance and processing efficiencies. When you work with us, you’ll receive:
- Analytical Expertise: From collecting information on materials, conducting trials at our facility, to providing product and processing recommendations, we’ll help ensure our solutions work effectively to accomplish your goals.
- Troubleshooting and Optimizing: We’ll help you address issues on-site to ensure you have a seamless transition to incorporating our adhesive solutions. We will also provide recommendations to help prevent future issues that could arise.
Interested in learning how these adhesive solutions can help enhance the end-of-life impact of the products you are manufacturing? Contact a Bostik expert to learn how we can help you design with sustainability.
Make sure to read the other blog posts from our Designing for Sustainability Series:
Why You Should Consider an Adhesive’s Formulation
Why You Should Use an Adhesive with Optimized Performance Attributes
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
See also
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- Advanced Packaging
- Durable Goods