Jan 8, 2025 - 3-5 minutes
Designing for Sustainability: Why You Should Consider an Adhesive’s Formulation
Find out how sustainable adhesive formulations can enhance product performance and reduce environmental impact. Read about bio-based, zero solvent, isocyanate-free adhesives as well as dosing nozzle packaging design, and learn how they contribute to sustainable manufacturing processes.
In today’s industrial markets, manufacturers like you strive to improve product sustainability while meeting high performance and maintaining processing efficiencies. Your chosen adhesive solutions are key to helping achieve these goals – however, adhesives often have been overlooked due to a lack of awareness about their impact in an end-use product. This is because manufacturers typically have been inclined to focus on whether the adhesive works but have not considered how the adhesive formulation plays a role.
As part of our Design for Sustainability series, learn how assessing an adhesive’s formulation while in the product development stage can allow you to better design for sustainability.
Adhesive Formulation Challenge #1: Fossil Fuels
Adhesives are commonly based on fossil fuels, due to extensive historical research and infrastructure created to produce them. However, fossil fuels take millions of years to form; so, heavy reliance on them as feedstock can pose availability concerns.
Example of Alternative Solutions:
Recycled, Bio-Based or Bio-Attributed Adhesive Formulations
Alternative options exist that can be replenished at a faster rate than fossil fuels, such as adhesives formulated with recycled, bio-based or bio-attributed raw materials. These can include hot melts based partially on natural rosins or polyurethanes developed using vegetable castor oil. In addition to reducing fossil fuel dependency, these adhesives can be a good option to decrease a design’s carbon footprint and help mitigate the climate change impact of material sourcing. They can be processed at decreased temperatures and with fewer steps compared to fossil-fuel-based adhesives, which contributes to energy savings.
Adhesive Formulation Challenge #2: Harmful Substances
Adhesives may be formulated with harmful substances, such as certain solvents or isocyanates. However, these substances can pose health risks in addition to requiring additional precautions.
Examples of Alternative Solutions:
Zero Solvent Adhesives
Zero solvent adhesives do not contain any solvents in their formulations and are:
- Low odor: Since zero solvent adhesives contain no solvents, they have minimal to no smell and impact on air quality.
- Non-toxic: Zero solvent adhesives are safer for use in environments where people may be sensitive to chemicals.
- Easier to store and transport: Compared to solvent-based adhesives, zero solvent adhesives don’t need special precautions since they contain no hazardous substrates. Therefore, they are also more cost effective to ship and store.
For example, UV acrylic adhesives are formulated to offer high-performance capabilities comparable to solvent-based adhesives but do not contain solvents. As a result, no harmful chemicals are evaporated into the environment during production. Further, when an adhesive does not have much or any substance that needs to evaporate first, such as the case with UV acrylics, plant space can be more efficiently utilized, and production lines can run more seamlessly.
Isocyanate-Free Adhesives
Isocyanates can pose health risks due to their potential to cause respiratory issues and skin irritation. When an adhesive is isocyanate-free, it is safer for end users and the environment, reducing the risk of exposure to and emittance of harmful substances.
Silyl modified polymers (SMP) and low monomer polyurethane (PUR) are examples of isocyanate-free adhesives.
- Silyl modified polymers (SMP) are versatile adhesives that cure through moisture and offer excellent adhesion and flexibility as well as resistance to weathering and UV radiation. This helps end-use products provide long-term use, helping to reduce material replacements over time. SMP also offers primerless adhesion to simplify production steps and reduce SKU volume needs.
- Low monomer PUR adhesives are designed to release fewer volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and other harmful substances due to being isocyanate free. This helps contribute to healthier indoor air quality and reducing overall environmental impact. Low monomer PUR adhesives also can be applied at lower temperatures, helping reduce energy consumption during processing.
Adhesive Formulation Challenge #3: Product Waste
Adhesives may also be formulated in such a way where you end up using too much. In addition to increasing product performance issue likelihood, this can lead to product waste, which harms the environment and raises your costs.
Examples of Alternative Solutions:
MECA-based, cyanoacrylate instant adhesives can be specifically formulated for “by the dot” needs to help ensure only the right amount of adhesive is dispensed for a given application and to keep waste to a minimum. With bonding time that lasts only seconds, they provide multi-substrate adhesion, allowing you to move on to the next production step quickly and reduce overall adhesive changeouts for improved energy efficiencies, too.
Water-white adhesives provide precise dispensing characteristics for increased output and versatile usage in addition to reducing waste. This can decrease cleanup and downtime efforts, helping converters manufacture more products at a faster rate. Additionally, they can offer strong adhesion to sustainable substrates that may otherwise present extra challenges to adhere to in low temperatures.
How Bostik Can Help:
As the adhesive solutions segment of Arkema, our Bostik team understands you may have questions about what’s involved in understanding how adhesive formulations impact sustainability and finding the right sustainable adhesive for your production. That’s why we provide:
- 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 how your adhesive’s formulation helps with overall sustainability? Contact a Bostik expert today to learn how our sustainable solutions can help improve your environmental footprint while helping you achieve high performance and efficient processing.
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