What Are the Economic and Ecological Benefits of Recyclable Label Products and Paper Fiber?
The benefits to using recyclable/recoverable paper in the production of packaging, labels, and other printed products are many. They include:
- The reduction in the use of virgin timber, to be replaced by recycled wood pulp and other wood products.
- The cultivation of stands of timber specifically to be harvested for paper production, leaving other climax forests of various hardwoods free of clear-cutting and other destructive timbering activities.
- The reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from land-filled paper.
- The conservation of land-fill space. Having used packaging that fails to meet the needs of the environment and the modern economy, the United States is running out of this space, such that by 2021, there will only be another 15 years remaining of total landfill capacity.
With the growth of e-commerce platforms — and even with current events — there has been a parallel growth in demand for clean, fully recyclable label products and packaging. Companies have been working at top speed to make recyclable label products and catalogues available online 24/7. In response, customer demand for fast, free shipping has grown exponentially. This charged fast-moving online economy has presented the paper industry with a conundrum: How to feed the ever-growing consumer appetite while managing the waste stream it creates?
Given this pressure, new efforts are underway at the regulatory level to find solutions. For example, the United States Postal Service (USPS) undertook a project starting in 2017 which, among other goals, set out to establish a metric to help identify adhesives that might prove environmentally benign. These adhesives had to meet the agency’s guidelines for postage stamp adhesives, and also satisfy the industry’s metrics for recyclability. In order to respond to these more demanding USPS standards, the Tag and Label Manufacturing Industry (TLMI) was compelled to create their own Standards for Recycling Compatible Adhesives. This has allowed the USPS and TLMI to synchronize their requirements for manufacturers.
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